Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[Doug Millison]

I studied Saussure with Todorov. And my copy of V. still has a finite number
of words, which would add up to a finite number of signifiers if you
consider the words Pynchon wrote in the novel as signifiers.

-----Original Message-----
From: jbor [mailto:jbor at bigpond.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 1:35 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon


Signifier and Signified

"Signifier" and "signified" are terms used in one branch of linguistics and
literary criticism to describe the components of a sign: the signifier, to
put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or idea it
represents. Signifiers needn't be confined to words; they can include any
system of representation, including drawings, traffic lights, body language,
and so on. Much of the literary criticism of the last twenty-five years has
focused on the relationship between the signifier and signified, and
therefore on the very nature of meaning.

http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Terms/signifier.html

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> My copy of V. has a finite number of words and pages. How does that
> translate into "a never-ending chain
> of signifiers"? Unless maybe this author is talking about interpretations
of
> the words Pynchon writes, a critic spinning off new signifiers from the
text
> that Pynchon provides.