irony WAS RE: is Pynchon a recluse?

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<Whatever you think, it's not going to eliminate Pynchon's use of irony in
his fiction.>>

Certainly there are examples of irony in Pynchon's writing.  There are 
undoubtedly examples in Maeve Binchy's writing.  It makes of neither an 
ironist.   

A couple of points.  That I briefly noted that I don't think of Pynchon as an 
ironic writer was in response to Millison's referring to "authorial irony ... 
"deep and layered and nuanced" in the introduction to Slow Learner, without 
which irony the gathered insight into P's life and ideas Millison believes 
the introduction provides are unfounded.  If one is to claim this 
introduction to be ironic in tone and not the perhaps overly 
self-deprecating, but generally straightforward and honest reassessment it 
offers itself to be, one should have some basis for that claim.  One would be 
that Pynchon has regularly used ironic narrative strategies as have Nabokov 
or Roth.  I see little evidence of this.  

Of course Pynchon recognizes and employs irony.  Pynchon notes an irony in 
the introduction, saying, "[I]t may yet turn out that racial differences are 
not as basic as questions of money and power, but have served a useful 
purpose, often in the interest of those who deplore them most, in keeping us 
divided and so relatively poor and powerless," but the point is not made 
ironically; i.e., he is not himself being ironic and it forms no part of an 
ironic strategy.  One might claim the word "pretend" in the early sentence "I 
now pretend to have reached a level of clarity about the young writer I was 
back then," to be an indicator that all that follows will not be as it seems, 
but it's not an argument easily sustained.  Rather, "pretend" is in keeping 
with the general tone of humility, a note that time may continue to undermine 
and force reconsideration of the certainties age and maturity may seem to 
grant.

Further, what would the introduction mean or say if Pynchon were, as Millison 
claims, writing ironically?  It would mean, in part, that P's 
self-deprecation is false, that he feels so confident in the quality of the 
stories that he expects the reader to recognize and enjoy his winking and 
false put-downs, his phony self-deprecation, making of the introduction an 
unpleasant, gloating exercise in self-regard.  Or, he expects these ironies 
to be missed and the entire introduction to be misunderstood, an exercise in 
perversity.

Not likely. 

<<Would you believe a satirist?>>

Of course.