pynchon-l-digest V2 #1610

[Dave Monroe]

Jody: yeah, "insist" was too strong a word there, and it probably 
characterizes my stance more than Hollander's ("insist" being too weak of a 
word there .... "assert"?).  Interestingly, Hollander can be read as a 
reception theorist of sorts, though his "receivers" seem to be a rather 
exclusive, perhaps even "elite" (a la your charcterization of that 
Pynchonian "elitism"?) "crowd" (of one?).  "Those who know, know," and the 
rest be damned?  Anyway, I think I've made it clear that I have a more 
general audience in mind, and any of your alternative terms there are 
agreeable and preferrable, esp. "enriches" (cf. previous comments about that 
interpretive economy) ...

But can I paraphrase your amendment to that Pynchonian context as asking the 
question, why write novels, rather than, say, historical,  political and/or 
cultural analyses?  Why write at all, rather than run for office, where one 
can write legislation instead?  Again, inclinations, backgrounds, 
opportunities, even ... but I get the impression that Pynchon didn't give up 
his day job 'til after the success of V., so ...

And, yeah, every time I let that "Penelopean" slip, I do consider just who 
Penelope might be (not to mentione Ulysses ... Penelope as the "maaswerk" to 
Ulysses, her story as the "maaswerk" to the Odyssey?  Imagine the story of 
Penelope as told by the women of Ithaca: "She waited HOW LONG for that 
guy?").  "We"--Pynchon, Oedipa, the reader--all seem to take on that role in 
The Crying of Lot 49, no? And one can ask the same questions of V.  Perhaps 
we're ALL left at home, albeit remodelled as something uncanny, unheimlich, 
"unhomely," indeed  ...

But everything all at once, well, again, Hollander's readings are a useful 
contrast to my own, esp. as I find them eminently useful even as I have my 
disagreements with them.  Again, I'm pretty ecumenical about interpretation, 
perhaps even in that Rabbinic, midrashic sense of being able to inscribe 
even conflicting readings in teh margins of the text at hand (see Susan A. 
Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in 
Modern Literary Theory [Albany: SUNY Press, 1983]).  But my main question is 
about that surface/depth distinction, the exclusive veridicality of that 
"magic eye" as opposed to the presumably unenchanted one ...

That Varo/Varro thing, for example.  While it is relevant, valid, perhaps 
even ingenious to read that reference to Remedios Varo as alluding to the 
Menippean satirist, Varro, the RV paintings alluded to, indeed, described in 
the text are no less germane to reading them, no?  But Hollander's roadmaps 
to Pynchon's texts tend almost unfailingly to take those forks in the road 
which run through less-visited neighborhoods.  I'd just as soon map as many 
routes as possible, is all.  but tehre's only so much travel time, so ...

But, language, very good, and a lesson I've tried to teach but apparently 
haven't learned, that, if one is going to insist on some sort of 
form/content distinction in literature, language is the content, and 
generics and thematics and poetics and so forth are the various forms 
involved, rather than vice versa.  'Zat about right?

And I've got one more thing I want in particular to get to here, but, 
Richard, it is precisely because of the objections (?) you raise, and 
similar objections that both jody and Charles Hollander have raised, that I 
"insist" (contra Oedipa Maas?) on the importance of those "excluded middles" 
betwixt the Tristero and the earth.  Just because you're paranoid, doesn't 
mean "They" AREN'T out to get you, no?  And perhaps THAT'S why it's 
important to note those politiacl, historical, whatever references, 
allusions, in those Pynchonian texts, to determine how they might be 
negotiating that passage betwixt the Scylla of paranoia and teh Charybdis of 
actuality ...



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