V.V. (19) Re: Thoroughly postmodern Pynchon

[jbor]

on 6/30/01 3:53 PM, Otto at o.sell at telda.net wrote:

Thanks for the snip from the Ruland/Bradbury book, Otto. Reading the current
chapter on the train yesterday this passage jumped out of the text at me in
the context of the "finite number of words" fallacy. It's right at that
moment that Stencil's "quest" is beginning to fizzle:

    A phrase (it often happened when he was exhausted) kept cycling round
    and round, preconsciously, just under the threshold of lip and tongue
    movement: "Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic." It repeated
    itself automatically and Stencil improved on it each time, placing
    emphasis on different words -- "events *seem*"; "seem to be *ordered*";
    "*ominous* logic" -- pronouncing them differently, changing the "tone of
    voice" from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round. Events seem
    to be ordered into an ominous logic. He found paper and pencil and began
    to write the sentence in varying hands and typefaces. (449)

Thus, neither in the reading nor in the *writing* of Pynchon's text is it
valid to deny that an infinite chain of signifiers might exist simply on the
basis that there are a finite number of words and pages in the novel. Vocal
stress, intonation, tone; textual features such as italics and font styles:
these things, as Pynchon emphasises here, *signify*.

The way Stencil leaves Valetta, and his note in particular, really do make
him out to be a selfish jerk after all. ("Swine" is what Fausto exclaims
after he has read the note, and he's right!) Stencil leaves Malta, his quest
fizzles out, precisely because he doesn't possess either the courage or
desire to face up to what that quest might reveal, both personally,
historically, and epistemologically:

    Stencil sketched the entire history of V. that night and strengthened
    a long suspicion. That it did add up only to the recurrence of an
    initial and a few dead objects. (445)

What that use of the single initial in old Sidney's diaries should have
signalled to young Stencil, what he refuses to admit all along, is that some
type of intimacy existed between his father and the woman whose first name
it stands for. 

best