MDDM Ch. 12 Summary & Notes

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, now I know I'm back from vacation ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> > But much complaining about vague and ultimately
> > untenable generalities without any specifics.
> 
> Both "vague" and "ultimately untenable", with no
> corroborating detail for either negative, and
> seemingly contradictory, assertion?

Well, again, just what are y'all complianing about, is
all I asked, is all I ask, esp. when it comes to
unctions declarations of the (romanticist? et al. ...)
sanctity of Lit'rachure Indivisible in the face of
Politicks.  There SEEMED to be a target there, just
can't discern what it might have been.  But yr aim, it
seems, was blurred as well, so ... so, see again ...

> > And as these have presumably been responses to me,
> > I'm at a particular loss as to what such complaint
> > might be about.  
> 
> I don't believe that any of the three responses was
> actually intended as a "complaint", they were merely
> responses to your admonition that "you gotta
> do the research first in order to determine just
> where and when he's deployiong just what and how",
> with your ominous hint that Pynchon is "Doing
> Something", as though there is an ultimate coded
> significance behind the text and that there is a
> single, "correct" line of extra-textual research to
> be followed. Perhaps you misstated your position?

Nope, you've misstated it for me.  Yr speciality, as
Mia Wallace might mispronounce it.  My point was, is,
will continue to be, it does not hurt to do the
research, Pynchon himself has obviously done it (oh,
to have time for astronomy and the Gothic here, but
...), and, hey, we can trade reinserting each other's
rhetoric back into, well, each other's rhetoric to the
end of time here (turnabout fair trade, or
conspicuously subject to the law of diminishing
returns?  I'm sure we're all familiar with the concept
of entropy 'round these parts ...), but that
Something, those Somethings, which Pynchon is indeed
Doing (to what purpose[s], with what degree[s] of
purposiveness, with what effects in any case) is what
I, we, I believe, am, are groping for here ...  

But, well, duh, in order to recognize an allusion, you
have to recognize that there is an allusion being
made, which generally entails recognizing what is
being alluded to.  As, as there is so often more here
than meets the eye ... well, hey, ask Terrance,
doesn't hurt to have read Norman O. Brown's Life
Against Death in reading Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's
Rainbow.  Despite the former never having been
explicitly called forth by the latter.  Again, what
was the compliant here?  Was it anything much beyond
the mere desire to complain?  A desire which
apparently drives Th' List these days ...
 
> > Don't like my annotations?  Don't read 'em
> > then.  
> 
> A little thin-skinned, this, no? One minute you're
> belly-aching about being ignored, then the next ....
> The term "Sheesh" springs to mind.

Actually, speaking of bellies aching, the term "Lunch"
comes to mind, so ... but y'all have been doing a fine
job on the aforementioned scientific and literary
Topicks, and, hey, whaddaya y'know, I even happened to
ahve picked up a slim volume of Ruskin ("You can't
make extratextual references here, this is the Pynchon
List!") during my travels, so ... so time for me to
start lugging around the Re-Search again.  Might be
another day or two 'til I get to deploy it again, but ...

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