MDDM Ch. 12 Summary & Notes

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, one more of these, and then I'd really like to
get back to the novel, if I've any time left ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> I'd agree with Terrance and Paul here. It's far more
> interesting and worthwhile to interpret and evaluate
> what's in the books, rather than forever trawling
> elsewhere and trying to force things into them which

> aren't there at all. 

Again, there is no outside-the-text, here, elsewhere,
anywhere.  First off, you gotta start with language
(which, of course, hardly exists in some virtual,
immaterial realm), a language, even (though Finnegans
Wake seems to have finessed that problem to some
extent).  And then there's all the historical,
cultural, literary, whatever baggage that goes with,
baggage which Pynchon, for example, seems to rifle
through with no small fervor.  Unpacking those bags
here ...

One reads in light of the extensive work that's
already been done in order for language to refer
meaningfully in any way to anything, not to mention in
order for a bunch of marks on a bunch of pages bound
into a bunch of books to make any partcular sense
whatsover, much less as "literature," "fiction,"
"narrative," as a "novel" ...
 
At any rate, again (and again, and again ...) there is
no text that is complete in and of itself.  One can
draw one's boundaries around them if one wants, no
matter how difficult that might be in the case of
con/text, but that makes that boundaries no less
artificial ...

> This is particularly so when the trawling is done in
> the interests of producing a biased reading, or
> rewriting, of the text.

Nor does it make those boundaries, no matter how
permeable, no matter how evanescent, and, ultimately,
no matter how unreal, no less political.  Such
boundaries both exclude and contain, and their
virtuality does not preclude actual, even material
effects ...

But much complaining about vague and ultimately
untenable generalities without any specifics.  And as
these have presumably been responses to me, I'm at a
particular loss as to what such complaint might be
about.  Don't like my annotations?  Don't read 'em
then.  Others find 'em useful, apparently.  And I
enjoy posting them.  But I remember just what an
eye-opener it was to realize just how much of
Gravity's Rainbow might actually be true ...  

> Of course, any reading is intrinsically biased, or
> subjectivised, but there's a difference between
using 
> the texts to champion some doctrinaire political or
> religious viewpoint, meanwhile turning the texts
> into little more than polemics, and acknowledging
> and valuing them for the complex and multifarious
> works of art which they are.

Again, specifics lacking here, I've no idea of whom or
what any of this might be directed at ...
 
> But perhaps Dave Monroe's ire was more due to the
> fact that what lies beneath big one (and crew)'s
> zipper has now been exposed?

Whoever, whatever that might mean.  Please, people,
leave the crypticisms to Pynchon.  He's far better at
them, and at least he gives me something to work with
in working them out.  It's waht we're here for,
presumably ...

No, any "ire" on my part was directed at yet again one
of Morris' hypocrisies, his complaints about the
presumed triviality and/or irrelevance of the postings
of others given the extraodinary triviality and
irrelevance of many to most to perhaps all of his own
these days.  I'd hardly expect current events to go
unnoticed on this list, is one thing, and by now I
can't help but expect insults to be slung with
impunity here, but, hey, every so often, somebody
ought to point out these little inconsistencies, so ...

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