eddins' mono-contexturalism

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 here it it: "to suggest [like, perhaps, thomas docherty, whom eddins just 
 quoted with - probably: problematic - snips.kfl] that 'multiplicity and 
 fragmentation' are desiderata for pynchon is to fall into the simplistic 
 equation of form and theme that so often vitiated the early criticism of 
 ulysses, and to miss the complex tension in his fiction between a collapsing 
 'onthotheology', the growth of cosmic anomie, the prospects of gnostic control, 
 and nostalgia for a benevolent natural unity. to put it another way, the 
 'multiplicity of plots' [docherty] finds a thematic coherence in what we might 
 call the metaplot of an urgent drive to discover what unity or disunity is 
 imposed on human kind by the cosmic case of things, not to subvert the 
 possibility of this unity in an ecstasy of poststructuralist jouissance. 
 certain forms of multiplicity, at least, are aspects of the gnostic malaise, 
 not of the cure, and actually tend to function - in pynchonian mechanics - as 
 part of the dehumanizing forces." (the gnostic pynchon, pp. 18f.) 

 that invented "metaplot coherence" is, in my opinion, too narrow to function  
 as an interpretative framework for our creative reading process.

 & we know since hegel that the distinction of "form and theme", eddins makes 
 use of here, is  n o t  an ontological one. theme becomes form becomes theme 
 becomes form ...


kfl