V.V. (12) Pynchon's letter to Thomas F. Hirsch

[Dave Monroe]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> ----------
> >From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> >
> 
> yes, "interpretation of" the letter as saying
> something which supports a
> particular reading of Pynchon's fiction
> 



> 
> "argument against" what the letter ostensibly says,
> or argues
> 
> I think I followed you. What I found odd was the way
> that you selectively
> deconstructed a couple of Pynchon's definitions and
> arguments, but then
> claimed others as QED to support a particular
> interpretation of or approach
> towards the texts. This is the "double standard" I
> was referring to.

Again, do please read what you are ostenisbly
responding to.  "Quod erat demonstrandum?"   Those
punctuation marks are there to be read.  A rhetorical
question, albeit one I perhaps do have a certain
answer to.  Yours perhaps differs.   But waht was that
which is to be proved there?  I'd though we were
discussing somewhat different issues, ceratinly a
different novel, there ...

> What you seem to be reiterating (over and over and
> over ... ) 

You always seem to require anything from clarification
to outright correction.  For your benefit, then ...

is that
> Pynchon makes a false distinction between literate
> and preliterate
> societies, and that he is labouring under a false
> assumption about what the
> terms "Germany" and "German" might constitute as
> descriptors, while not
> acknowledging that, even so, these "elements might
> be operating" in his
> fiction as well (even though you think he's wrong
> about them).

Do not recall (nor do the archives) having much gone
into how such problematics might be operative in the
fictions, but both I and tarchives seem to have a
clear memory of raising that distinct possibility. 
Again, Reading is Fundamental ((c) Ed Asner) ...

Wouldn't it
> be more logical to admit that these distinctions and
> assumptions (false or
> otherwise, that's surely a "relative" judgement or
> opinion, isn't it? surely
> Derrida is able to see beyond his own subjectivity,
> even if only
> hypothetically) are evident in the fiction?

Again (and again and again ...), maybe they are, maybe
they're not.  Haven't gotten 'round to worrying about
it much yet.  If you'd care to explicate ... but
either way, they're still problematic to outright
mistaken.  But, hey, I managed to survive, for
example, Shakespeare's anachronisms (e.g., that clock
in Julius Caesar), errors ("shores of Bohemia"), and
employment of all sorts of wackiness that once served
as everything from "common knowledge" to "standard
practice" to "universal truth" (thinking here esp. on
Early Modern European medicine, religion, politics). 
Well worth boning up on such historical contexts when
reading, well anything.  Helps work out all sorts of
weirdness.  And do note that one of my ongoing
interests has been to account for various elements in
Pynchon along similarly historicist lines ...

By the way, that "planetarium" in "Mondaugen's Story"
is, more accurately, an orrery, and, yes, the mention
of Pluto is an anachronism, as is much, of course, in
Pynchon's fictions, but, again, he's hardly writing
conventional "historical" novels, is he?  Such slips
are anything from forgivable (though I'm surprised
Pynchon didn't take the opportunity to deploy teh
word, "orrery") to perhaps pregnantly significant ... 


He seems to have had his Pluto facts straight by
Gravity's Rainbow, where it comes up again, but, given
that such details would have been fresher in the
popular imagination a decade earlier (and this was the
kind of thing those us us raised in the space age
would have known as kids), I suspect he might well
have known better, but decided to deploy that ninth
"planet" anyway.  Maybe, maybe not.  But recall its
associations in Gravity's Rainbow, either way, such
significations are operative here as well.  And, while
I'm at it, do see Robert Holton's excellent reading of
that scene, though I'll post from it as soon as I'm
carrying it around again (was saving it for the
eventual discussion thereof here, so I didn't post it
earlier) ...

Hardly your ...
 
> best

... effort here.  Better luck next time ...


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