Pynchon & rap

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> --- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > Hollander argues that the total absence from the
> > text has greater meaning than presence. He argues
> > that P is something of cryptic writer. The less P
> > alludes to or mentions something the greater its
> > significance.
> 
> ... but "total absence" isn't quite right here.

I think it is exactly right. 
For example, the assassination of JFK is nowhere to be found
in CL49. 
The event is absent, a total absence. 

Hollander says, 

"Chapter by chapter, step by step, Pynchon leads us to the
assassination of President Kennedy, without ever mentioning
the then-recent event directly." 

P never mentions it at all. The event is not present in the
text. 


This total absence is a presence as Hollander reads the
story. If you go back and read his Pynchon Notes Essay, you
will discover that after he says that absence is in fact a
presence in P's works, he never explains what he means. He
goes into the disinherited theme and the "need" or desire 
to be cryptic. It's being totally absent is what makes it
the most important thing. Hollander begins by acknowledging
the total absence of the assassination. Pynchon never
mentions it directly. Also, what he says is that the word
Dallas is critical because it mentioned only once. The
assassination event, in not being mentioned, mentioned not
once, and only once, but never, is what P wants us to see. 


> Hollander always, quite scrupulously, starts from
> something in the text, on the page, and, while he
> often takes as his staring points seemingly extraneous
> details (names of minor characters, for example),
> taking them off on seemingly extraneous tangents, he
> reinforces his readings, justifies these starting
> points, makes relevant these tangents, with an
> accumulation of textual examples and contextual
> likelihoods.  

Agreed. 

Cf. information theory, cryptography,
> what have you, the idea that it is often the seemingly
> extraneous, the idiosyncratic, that is potentially the
> most significant.  Pynchon himself raises several such
> possibilities for reading, inetrpretation, whatever.
> "Screen doors."   

Yes, but