VV the WSC &c

[jbor]

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>From: jporter <jp4321 at IDT.NET>
>

snip
> If such horrors and mistakes could have been (or might still be) avoided- by
> what means? Do the texts tell us? Is "keep cool but care" gonna do it?
> However, if there is no avoiding them, beyond mere detail, what difference
> does it make if the referenced horrors are *central* to the texts or not?
>
> In another vain, relativism is "inherent to history," or at least the
> recording of history, but so what? Why should lack of ultimate objectivity
> cause one to lose the name of action? It didn't stop Dixon.

Dixon's "action" is apocryphal at best, however, and it's very important to
recognise the subjunctivenesses and unfixed modalities of the text/s.

I'm all for approaching interpretation from as many angles as possible btw:
the author real or implied, her or his ostensible purpose/s, the
socio-cultural environment, text features, the implied reader/s, the text's
immediate reception, "gut" responses and "deeper" allegories. This is what I
mean by critical pluralism, or inclusiveness.

So, starting with Pynchon and "intentionality". He grew up in Oyster Bay,
New Jersey, spent some time in the Navy (Maryland, then Norfolk Va.) in the
mid 50s, went to Cornell U., then in 1960 moved to Seattle (little wonder
this is where he eventually found the time to put it together as a
full-length novel!) It's easy to see how aspects of the personal history
have manifested in _V._, and why it's very much a "New York" or East Coast
novel of the 50s, as many commentators have noted, with a few "sea stories"
(cf. 'Low-lands') thrown in for good measure.

Then, what's his bag? why's he writing fiction? why's he writing fiction
like this? I don't think that, on subsequent evidence, either personal kudos
or the accumulation of wealth or art for art's sake or 'anxiety of
influence' can seriously be counted as motivating factors. That leaves much
scope certainly, but I think that there are definite elements of the
cathartic and of the didactic in his aesthetic: understanding the past and
his own socio-cultural condition and 'conditioning'; getting deep into local
and global histories and the epistemologies which drive them; and,
ultimately and perhaps then only vaguely, trying to leave the world a better
place than when he began &c. (i.e. 'Keep cool but care' etc -- but, how can
he foresee what will be made of his work? how it might be construed? More
than just humility I think Pynchon is very aware of the implicit *dangers*
in being an "influence" on impressionable young minds.)

Who, then, are some of his immediate literary models? Well, he announces his
admiration for _On the Road_ in no uncertain terms I think. It's a pretty
damn good book so he reckons. Rocked his, and everyone's, literary world in
them there late 1950s. And I think that it is probably a fruitful place to
start, both socio-culturally and in terms of textual analysis. Step 1, write
about what you know, or, as Jack did, write about *who* you know: Ginsberg,
Snyder, the Black Mtn habitues, Rexroth, Gaddis etc make up his version of
the 'Whole Sick Crew'. (I think that for *his* WSC Pynchon is also writing
about who and what he knew *about* -- mediated rather than direct experience
-- but it's a similar strategy nonetheless.) Step 2, the placement of the
I-personas -- the narrative agency -- which is another point of comparison.
In both _On the Road_ and _V._ the I-persona is a shifty thing: Kerouac's is
generally though not always more that of an observer and recorder rather
than a participant; Pynchon's is split in twain, one being observed (Benny)
and one constantly observing (Stency).

Now, the reader orientation, the youth of the 60s, the future. How will his
own text speak to these or, perhaps deeper than this, what sorts of cultural
trends and ideologies from the 50s are or will be significant? Who from the
50s is/will be still speaking to the youth of the 60s and leaving a mark?
Who were (could have been?) the WSC of the U.S. 1950s? Who would have had to
(this is where the modalities start to open up for the reader imo, the
historical relativities to kick in -- could have, should have, did, didn't
etc etc) get together and start talking to one another in order to make the
60s and beyond a better place? Could have been/could still be, that fragile
subjunctive hope. Or, if you want to close it off (and why would you?), who
do we blame?

Well, let's start with Baudelaire. Mmm. Not much chance of getting him to
come sit around that table. You'd have to dig him up, for a start ... But,
addressing the possibility that the allusion is there, I think that, if
anything, what Benny and Herb epitomise is something diametrically opposite,
an anti-flaneur. And, in fact, I don't think there was a flaneur-figure in
the U.S. 1950s (Warhol was very much of the 60s I think). Perhaps there
could have or should have been or something, but ... Perhaps it was what
Pynchon and Richard Farina would have liked to be at one time, dressed up as
dandies and mock-duelling one another in the university grounds ...

And, not *the poet* who wrote 'Le deserteur' as such, but vicariously
through Paola perhaps, someone who knew him and could disseminate the
influence, make the song come alive (and it is *translated* into English in
the text), convey the experience and sentiments of that poem, turning away,
going AWOL, becoming a bum, all in the face of the tragedies which war
brings etc etc Similarly with Sartre; not the man himself but the ideas.
What was being talked about, what was affecting the way young people
thought.

However, there are certainly more obvious and direct allusions. I think we
can say with some assurance that at the hypothetical table, or party, are
should/could be) people like, well not Charlie Parker as such but those who
followed, Monk and Ornette Coleman. They were certainly speaking to, or
capable of speaking to the young 'uns. (And, the record company exec. is an
ongoing and ubiquitous seam in the social fabric of P's worlds as well.)
Next there are the avant-garde painters: definitely Pollock, de Kooning,
Motherwell, Johns, Rauschenberg, emigrés like Max Ernst, a whole gaggle of
them. And, on the literary front and strange as it might seem, Ayn Rand. I
think all we need to do is some 3-D graph statistically correlating her and
Pynchon's current Amazon reader review quotas, volume of words/texts
published (discounting Rand's godawful non-fiction essays altogether), and
the number of years since their publication, to argue that, at the very
least, the prospective influence of Rand's writings could and cannot be
dismissed. And this without even considering her substantive involvement in
50s U.S. politics and society, that Oscar, her embodiment of ardent
anti-Sovietism etc.

Who's missing? Well, for the most part, the politicians and bureaucrats are
pretty faceless or nameless (or *just* names) or interchangeable. And, on
the strength of this, I think that at base Pynchon holds to a pretty Marxian
outlook on social development. Popular culture -- the comix and B-movies and
airport novels and chart-toppers -- which don't get nearly as much attention
in _V._ as in the following works (put it down to the pretentiousness of
youth perhaps? still partrially seduced by that phantasmal High/low culture
divide?). Orson Welles of course (and he gets a quasi-guest appearance in a
parenthetic dream sequence in the next novel to rectify the oversight I
think). Kerouac, though Pig Bodine always strikes me as a Kerouackian
(anti-?) hero of a sort. And I'm sure there is much much more.

So, yes, I can agree that Pynchon:

> is a serious student of history, his
> serious interest in the  politics and history of the 1950s
> and 1940s and 1930s in evident in V.

though I think that so far in the reading it's largely been the U.S. 50s and
the Benny I-persona, man without qualities, floating aimlessly, absorbing
whatever culture or sub-culture he lands in, which has been in play (the
almost perfect phenomenological specimen in terms of objective narrative
recount in fact); and that what we will find later in the Malta and Florence
and Sudwest scenes is the emergence of that other half of the Pynchonian
I-persona, the detached Stencilliser, the avid reader and researcher and
historical imaginer. But the why questions which Jody is asking, about what
happens *after* the text, or what was intended/expected to happen or to be
achieved, are certainly pertinent ones to consider as well.

best