is Pynchon a recluse?

[Menschen U. Hupokrinesthai]

>From: CyrusGeo at netscape.net
>
>Kurt-Werner Pörtner wrote:
>
> >  the author is
> >  the worst interpreter of his own work.
>
>Quite right, since he isn't supposed to be an interpreter at all. One does 
>not interpret one's own writings. This would only be valid in 
>psychotherapy. And writing is not psychotherapy, at least not when you 
>choose to publish what you've written. (Although some writers would 
>disagree on this ;-).

Not only some writers but some readers too. In fact,
I suggest that this position is pure nonsense, something
we hear a lot of, we can dig aout a few famous
quotations, but few, if they really think about
it and know the history of literature and criticism agree with.
There are countless examples of authors that are in
fact very good at reading and interpreting their own
work. This is not only true in literature but
in all the arts. How interesting are the reflections and
interpretations of old men looking back on their
youthful productions.

How important these reflections, admissions, interpretations
prove to be may not sit well with some critical schools,
but we can't simply dismiss them with the old cliche, the
author is the worst interpreter of his/her own work.

Kierkegaard had a host of personas. He employed these
in his so called aesthetic works which appear as indirect communications in 
which the author attempts to reach his readers by beginning from where they 
are. The aesthetic
works are written over pseudonyms because, unlike the
religious works, they do not represent the position of
Kierkegaard himself.

"I represented a worldly irony, joie de vivre, the subtlest
form of pleasure-seeking--without a trace of "seriousness
and positivity;" on the other hand, I was prodigiously witty
and interesting."

--The Point Of View of My Work As An Author, Kierkegaard

He's correct, but what did other interpreters make of
his work? How about Swift? W/O his biographical
information, we would still be reading that he was
a mad man and we might not be reading Part IV of GT.

I could go on and on, what about Virgina Woolf?



>The author is the person behind the work. And the work, after its 
>publication, is autonomous and should be treated that way.

But it is the product of a person. A person with a
mind. There is a noetic quality to a text.
When I read William Blake or Yeats or Pynchon,
the more I know about how/why/what the artist thinks the
more I appreciate and understand, dlight.



Biographical details are irrelevant; besides helping a scholar formulate his 
opinions on the author, they can do nothing for the reader other than 
distract him from what's important: the work itself.

This is simply not true. You are going to tell me
that it's irrelevant that James Joyce was Irish?
That Shakespeare was an actor?




I'll say it again: The game is between the book and the reader. The author, 
though omnipresent, is absent, and the reader is left to cope with ... well, 
himself, really, i.e. whatever of himself he sees in the book.

ah!!!!!! The mirror turned on the reader!!!!!

The postmodern boys and girls.

You can't get away with this w/o a good argument.

Hell, I've got the history of art back to Plato behind me
and you have only the PO, what ever it is.


Could this be the reason why so many people have never been able to finish 
reading GR?

Could be because it's too big, too difficult.




>
>And from jbor:
> >  It strikes me that there are both aesthetic and political implications 
>to
> >  Pynchon's choice of public anonymity. For one, the texts speak for
> >  themselves, and this is something which is foregrounded by his absence 
>from
> >  the public spotlight. Secondly, garnering media celebrity would be 
>somewhat
> >  incongruous, if not hypocritical, in the light of his ongoing critique 
>of
> >  the structures and institutions of American hegemony.
>
>Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks.
>
>Cyrus
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