Identifying the Problem.2

[Dave Monroe]

Walter Pater I'm not so familiar with, save what's filtered down to me in discussions of him, though I do for reasons I can't recall have his book on "the" Renaissance on my current "to get" list, so there must have been something resonant.  But "knowing" anything "as it really is" resonates for me here not only with that Kantian ding an sich, er, thing, but in and of itself seems diametrically opposed to my usual emphasis (I THINK) on the essentially mediated nature of all experience, i.e., my antiessentialism.  "Objectivity"?  Please, sir, there are delicate souls (i.e., me) present.  "Formalist," on the other hand, I plead guilty, but with extenuating circumstances.But my emphasis on "those Pynchonian texts" is precisely an emphasis away from "Pynchon" as intentional guarantor of authorial, authoritative meaning, not in the least because of his own reticence to refusal to act as such himself.  But not only because of that apparent reluctance.  As a matter of principle, perhaps (and one that, perhaps, Pynchon "intentionally" shares, as manifested in that notorious reticence of his?).  Not so sure that I've argued that those Pynchonian texts generate responses in any unique way, though I can easily see arguing that they are likely to.  Seems, indeed, a common argument here, elsewhere.  They certainly seem more likely to elicit, provoke certain responses in ways that other texts do not.  As is true of any given text, of any given oeuvre, however you want to inscribe the boundaries here.  But I have argued, I think, that any text can be read productively via a infinite set of "methodologies" (or lack thereof)--therein lies my "democracy"?Anyway, there is much of relevance "in" any text, that is, much of relevance to any text, that any given author thereof might not have intended, might not have been aware of, might not have devoted much thought to, might have some interest, vested or otherwise, in dissimulating the relevance of, and so forth.  Contexts, texts, intertexts, subtexts, urtexts, a textual superego, ego, unconscious ("collective" or otherwise), preconscious, id, even.  Whatever ...But I do not believe I am attributing responses to "the text."  Nor to any individual reader, much less any idealized Reader.  To possible-to-probable readers (one of whom is, no doubt, myself, but that is true of any commentary here, no?  They are all first and foremost "our" "own" readings) interacting with an actual (!) text in possible-to-probable contexts.  Is this consistent?  Need it be?Maybe, maybe not, depending, in the first case, not necessarily, in the second.  Again, I am neither mounting a grand reading of any given text here, nor do I intend to.  And I've no doubt employed, pretty much explicitly, a certain ecumenical approach to reading.  My lit perfessers were largely either New Critics (those extenuating circumstances) or New Historicists, my inclination is largely deconstructive (and, tongue in cheek or no, I see a certain validity to Derrida's bemusement over hostility to him in American Literature departments when he said that he was only carrying out what the New Critics had started or somesuch).  So, of course, I understand the confusion, and no offense taken.  I'm much taken of late with this image of virtual particles emerging and disappearing into the apparent plenitude of the so-called vacuum, in transgression of so-called "universal" laws just briefly enough not to constitute a seious violation thereof, but nontheless mediating all that apparently is, and I think I've been offering readings of late in that image.  So are we now to require methodological purity tests from all posting here?  Will you be so kind as to explicate from whence the very intresting line(s?) of thought you seem to be developing came, and perhaps to where they might be proceding?  No, seriously, am interested ...


---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20010124/ac50372c/attachment.html>