FW: Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[jbor]

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From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: Samuel Moyer <smoyer at satx.rr.com>
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon
Date: Fri, Jun 29, 2001, 8:41 AM



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>From: "Samuel Moyer" <smoyer at satx.rr.com>
>

>   If
> there truly are a finite number of words (and meanings) then please
> unsubscribe me.... I'm wasting my time.

It's a good point. If Pynchon were simply an orthodox "religious writer" as
claimed then he wouldn't be as important or interesting as he obviously is.

In the field of semiotics/semiology it was Roland Barthes who, almost
singlehandedly, effected the shift from structuralism to post-structuralism
in a couple of works written in the period 1968-1970 (after the Paris
Evenements: there *was* a political component to it as well).

But Pynchon was already destabilising that rigid Saussurean equation of
signifier + signified = sign in the early stories and _V._, some 7 or 8
years previously. There's this from 'Entropy':

    [Saul] "Tell a girl: 'I love you'. No trouble
    with two-thirds of that, it's a closed circuit. Just you and she. But
    that nasty four-letter word in the middle, *that's* the one you have to
    look out for. Ambiguity. Redundance. Irrelevance, even. Leakage. All
    this is noise. Noise screws up your signal, makes for disorganization in
    the circuit." ('Entropy' 1960)

Even the terms he is using here ("leakage", "ambiguity", "noise") have their
counterparts in post-structuralist concepts such as "trace",
"disseminations", "indeterminacy", Derrida's "différance", and so forth. The
metaphor itself (the electrical "circuit", in later works the computer
circuit) is straight out of information theory (and I suspect that this is
where Luhmann might fit in too.)

And then there's "V", and "V.", in _V._ So, Pynchon's early fiction, both
thematically and structurally, prefigured what was to be an incredible
paradigm shift in Western thought, one which has had far-reaching
repercussions in all branches of human endeavour. Pretty cool, huh.

I have a simple question for the two pooh-poohers. In the novel, is "V"
signifier, signified, or sign? As it's the title of the novel (and taking
into account that important illustration on p. 7 of the text), I think it's
a pretty important question to be asking.

Further the full stop which follows the "V" (sometimes it's there, sometimes
not) is also a signifier. But what is its "signified"?

> I don't know what the hell Postmodern means (yes, yes, yes - I looked it
> up)... but I think jbor makes a good point and the Collado-Rodrigueza essay
> also... Doug, I like so much of what you say, but don't let this hatred you
> have for jbor force you

He certainly gives the Christian virtues a bad name!

> ... ah hell, bartender... pour me another.

Make mine a double.

best