Pynchon & rap

[jbor]

> They are at play to the degree that a reader might want to bring them into
> play and then follow Pynchon's text off into a chain of interpretations that
> may or may not have anything to do with what Pynchon actually wrote.

But 'The Star Spangled Banner' isn't directly mentioned either. Who brings
that into play? Not any of the characters whose discussion is being
represented, because in 1787 when the story-*telling* is set it wasn't
written yet!

> a South Philly musical experience that clearly recalls the early
> 60s 

??? What early 60s musical experience does it "clearly recall"?

> The way a particular reader makes the text "allude" to and "parallel"
> present trends and customs", isn't it.

Hang on a minute. Two days ago it was this:

> Since the major parallel that Pynchon sets up throughout M&D is 1760s
> (the period that encompasses the bulk of the novel's action)/1960s
> (the period of the youth and larger counter-culture rebellion to
> which P does in fact allude so often throughout the novel)

So when Doug says Pynchon refers to or alludes to or makes a parallel it's
Pynchon who's doing it. When anyone else proposes what Pynchon might be
alluding or referring to or parallelling, they're making it up? Is that how
reading Pynchon's novels works?

> Pynchon wrote what he wrote, it's
> there on the page; we're now well within the parameters of a particular
> reader's response.

As we are when *anyone* reads and interprets a text.

> as he/she claimed so strenuously during GRGR and the
> discussion about Pynchon's references to the Holocaust,

Actually, the way in which _M&D_ is written and structured supports the
notion that the Holocaust, denoting the genocidal Nazi campaign in the 30s
and 40s against their own citizens and the subsequent murder of over
6,000,000 Jewish and other "undesirables", is largely absent from _GR_.
Through the various contemporaneous narrative perspectives taken up in that
novel, Pynchon demonstrates that many people on both sides of the war divide
didn't know, or didn't want to know, about the Holocaust. For those who came
in late, just daring to offer this interpretation caused Millison to slander
me over a two year period as a "Holocaust-denier".

> Hollander begins with Pynchon's text (specific character
> names, direct references to historial events, etc.) and follows them where
> they might lead, puts together a tentative interpretation about what it
> might mean to read this chain of textual references and illusions as a
> "second story", a subtext, alongside the text we get on the page

So, what's different about the interpretative processes everybody else here
is using? Why is Hollander's readings of a sub-text in Pynchon's text any
more authentic than anyone else's? If that is an insulting question to ask,
so be it.

> If one
> reader can turn an M&D reference to the American National Anthem into a
> reference to Eminem

No-one has done this, of course. The passage at 261-5 is not only or so
simply "a reference to the American National Anthem", surely? It refers or
alludes to many things, including an array of modern musical styles, and as
many others have agreed, eminem is interesting enough to discuss in the
context of this forum. Nothing I've read in any of Pynchon's texts supports
a contention that he disdains contemporary rap music. There's a temporal
leap, I agree, in saying that Pynchon refers to musical styles and
performers c. 2001, but insofar as contemporary rap and hip hop derives from
the same musical roots which Pynchon does allude to or reference in all of
his novels and some of his non-fiction, and in terms of the way that Pynchon
enfranchises the reader to move interpretation and discussion of the texts
into present and future contexts, then I really can't see what the problem
is. George W. Bush's presidency is not directly referenced in any Pynchon
text either, but as it is also something which has derived from the various
political currents and trends which Pynchon does refer or allude to, then so
has it been fair game here. What's the diff?

best