Identifying the Problem.2

[Terrance]

The Problem of Constraint

Dave, 

One of your arguments, let's use Walter Pater's term, is
"Impressionist," "to know one's own impression as it really
is, to discriminate it, to realize it distinctly," Pater
says,  "is the first step." Here you are democratic, arguing
that each reader should have an aesthetic experience, the
fullest possible aesthetic experience afforded by those
Pynchonian texts. For example, a Vietnam Veteran  could post
his impressions of the novel V., impressions he experienced 
while reading it in a hospital in Korea after being lifted
from a maddening Mondaugan's nightmare in the belly of an
inanimate Jolly Green. Allowing for this particular reader's
capacities, sensibilities, preoccupations, memories, and so
forth, opens the text. 

We do not have a problem on this list with opening the text.
There are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which
is the democratic dynamics of the list itself and the
critical theories that have obviously interested and
influenced list members. 


But once you begin attributing these open responses to the
text (putting aside questions about authorial intent for the
moment),  to "those Pynchonian texts," what you are arguing
is how and why those "Pynchonian texts" generate these
various open and complex and intense readings. 


 I emphasize your phrase here (those Pynchonian texts)
because you also argue that P's texts are unique in why and
how they generate reader response. 

There is an apparent contradiction here, I'm trying to state
this without offending you, but your general or universal
impressionist's subjectivity simply does not square with
your more formalist claims to objectivity as it pertains to
the particulars of those Pynchonian texts.