is Pynchon a recluse?

[CyrusGeo at netscape.net]

"Menschen U. Hupokrinesthai" <menschenhupokrinesthai at hotmail.com> wrote:
 
> How interesting are the reflections and
> interpretations of old men looking back on their
> youthful productions.

Yes, they are, but do they alter your perception of a work you have already read? Or should they?

> 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.

I don't dismiss them. Again, I find them very interesting. I'm just saying they should not interfere with the experience of reading something for the first time.
 
> 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?

Excuse me, but I am somewhat confused: by writing the above, whose position are you defending, yours or mine? (I'm not being sarcastic, this is an honest question.)

> 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.

True. But your mind interacts with the text, not with the author.

> You are going to tell me
> that it's irrelevant that James Joyce was Irish?
> That Shakespeare was an actor?

To a scholar it is relevant, and very much so. But is it so to the reader? Suppose you hate fascism but you like Ezra Pound. When you learn that Pound actively supported fascism, do you stop liking Ezra Pound? Or, perhaps, do you try to find ways of persuading yourself not to dislike him?

 > ah!!!!!! The mirror turned on the reader!!!!!
> 
> The postmodern boys and girls.
> 
> You can't get away with this w/o a good argument.

I see. All I do is dare express an honest opinion, and suddenly I am labeled a Postmodernist. Nice. Oh, and you don't have to be aggressive. No need to. We're just talking. 

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

This is a very interesting claim, and I would really love to hear you back it up.

Please sharpen you pencils, not your knives.

Cyrus
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