Pynchon's "muse" (was ...

[jbor]

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From: "John Bailey" <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com>

> 'Writing,' including criticism, is, imo, 'something happening,' too.

Yes indeed. Writing is an event in this context, an event like any other.

> It
> does something. It has 'effects,' resonances, references, consequences.

Indeed it does. Look at the story of the NTA in _GR_:

    On sidewalks and walls the very first printed slogans start to show
    up, the first Central Asian fuck you signs, the first kill-the-police-
    commissioner signs (and somebody does! this alphabet is really
    something!) and so the magic that the shamans, out in the wind, have
    always known, begins to operate now in a political way, and Dzaqyp
    Qulan hears the ghost of his own lynched father with a scratchy pen
    in the night, practicing As and Bs . . .     (355-6)

> Isn't the lingering power of P's writing, especially, due to this fact?
> That there are, in whatever form, 'concrete' historical references being
> reworked?

An event and writing about that event are two separate things. That's a very
straightforward point, a simple and self-evident *fact*. Unless it can be
admitted or successfully refuted then there's no point proceeding. (Emotion
and animosity are not acceptable as refutation, of course.)

> That it evokes such a powerful response, even a physical one,
> from something as innocuous as the printed page?

History, propaganda, fiction, lines on a map, lines on the earth ... Isn't
such an idea "central" to Pynchon's work also?

best