Fausto is not Pynchon

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Thanks a lot, Terrance.

Certainly these are the grand themes of chapter 11. The crisis of self,
time, space etc. lies at the heart of Modernism. And of course, and
related to all this, language isn't what it used to be either, which,
for the poet, means a crisis of representation and also, so well
perceived and expressed by Mr. P in this chapter, a re-evaluation of his
function in society. I also certainly agree with your assessment of one
strand of Postmodernism's assessment of Modernism. Many things some
Postmodernists claim to have invented had in fact been on the Modernist
agenda for decades. Some other Postmodernists, on the other hand, of
course, are very well aware of this - hence the difficulty for
Postmodernism to create a tradition for itself, or, as McHale has it,
construct itself: Was Dada already PoMo and T.S. Eliot an anally
retentive Modernist? Didn't they both share the notion of an old world
having been blown to pieces? Or did Postmodernism begin with the
phenomenon famously described in Leslie Fiedler's "Cross the border,
close the gap", the  mingling of popular culture and "high culture"
(whatever that means - GR incorporates a whole lot of popular culture
but is not very popular i.e. widely read itself)? Is PoMo characterized
by a "shift of dominant" from epistemological to ontological questions?

But actually I don't want to enter this strand of discussion. We agree,
it seems, that chapter 11 of V. deals with central issues of Modernism.
Or, better, that the character of Fausto (I-IV)  in a way exemplifies
problems that lie at the heart of Modernist Weltanschauung and therefore
also literature (of course, one has to take into account that people
like us are probably familiar with something called "Modernist
Weltanschauung" mostly because of being familiar with the important
fictional texts and certain interpretations of them...). If the implied
author's pov (which I guess is what you are referring to in your subject
line as "Pynchon" (sorry, I know that this may sound ridiculous, but
there have been flame wars around here over less important
generalizations)) does not coincide with Fausto's, I would like to be
pointed to some textual evidence supporting this view.

Best wishes,
Thomas