the transparency of Pynchon's prose WAS RE: Pynchon & rap

[Thomas Eckhardt]

"Doug Millison" wrote:


> I wonder, is there really nothing in Pynchon's work that is obvious,
> straightforward, clear, easy to grasp(just to throw a few more adjectives
> into the mix)?

There certainly are things in P's fictions that I would call obvious. I would
not wish to discuss, for example, the question whether television plays an
important role in "Vineland" or not. Everyone who says it doesn't must have read
a different novel. In general, some of P's themes are certainly obvious. It is
very difficult, though, to nail down the author's, or, as I would prefer, the
implied author's, moral attitude towards these themes, as, for example,
television, science, religion. If it wasn't difficult, that is, if the author's
opinion was obvious, this list probably wouldn't exist, because most of the time
what we do is essentially to discuss the author's ethics (and to me, at least,
it often comes as a relief when in the course of one of these group-readings we
look simply at the meaning and the historical context of certain words, phrases
or plot elements). Which ethics may find expression in P's novels are an
exciting and fascinating topic, but one has got to tread rather carefully. Most
of the people who love these novels, and this is one thing we all seem to have
more or less in common, tend to find in them support for their own view of the
world. They can relate to something in the text. But, obviously, different
people relate to different things. And this is not an accident: Pynchon's texts
are usually brillant, but also difficult.

A few more words on the Holocaust topic: The question of the importance of the
Holocaust in GR is far more difficult to answer than the question of, for
example, the importance of TV in "Vineland". Generally, if I read jbor's old
posting and try to ignore the self-righteousness of your takes (as I have stated
way back when, generally I believe that you are correct in assuming that the
Holocaust is indeed very important for GR), it seems that we all could settle
for the term "conspicuous absence". How to evaluate this "conspicuous absence"
is a legitimate topic for discussion. But let us perhaps spare this for the next
GR group-read. I fear we are behaving very unpolitely towards the hosts of V.V.

Thomas