Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[jbor]

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>

> Only if you start with the assumption that one word in a given text =
> infinite number of signifiers.  If that's how it's defined, no problem. The
> definition that was offered earlier, "the signifier, to
> put it simply, is the word, and the signified is the thing or idea it
> represents" seems to say something different.

Actually, the "definition that was offered earlier" said the following:

    Signifiers needn't be confined to words; they can include any
    system of representation, including drawings, traffic lights, body
    language, and so on.

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

So with "V" in Pynchon's novel:

       As spread thighs are to the libertine, flights of migratory birds to
    the ornithologist, the working part of his tool bit to the production
    machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil. (61)

    V. by this time was a remarkably scattered concept. (389.6)

And so on. Which is Collado-Rodrigueza's comment in his very astute essay:

    ... the story, whose main
    aim is the quest for the lady V., finally dissolves in a never-ending
    chain of signifiers that always escapes an ultimate categorical meaning.

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/collado24.htm

best