MDDM Subjunctive Spaces

[jbor]

Paul, I think that what the reader brings to the text is as important in
Pynchon as what the writer has put into it, and I think that Pynchon has
deliberately  constructed his fictions so that this is just so. Obviously,
the texts themselves, signed, sealed and duly delivered to the good people
at Henry Holt, Jonathan Cape, Random House et. al., are vouchsafed to
posterity, to be read in readers' own good time. It almost seems redundant
to note that within the texts the reader's context isn't ruled out, is
overtly acknowledged and enfranchised (sometimes almost to a point where a
certain didacticism becomes apparent through the narrative veils), and there
are enough instances where Pynchon, or the implied Pynchon, seems to be
expressing something like personal dismay or frustration or wryness at not
being able to actually get 'outside' himself and really emulate that
'objective' (or 'other' - as in another time, another place, another mind)
vantage which his text aspires to emulate.

I think that a big concern of _M&D_ is to do with the way/s in which
language structures perception. It's very hard for me to conceive of that
"Subjunctive World" (677) which Indigenous American languages could
generate, because my perceptions of 'reality' have been constructed by the
"number'd and dreamless indicative" which prevails in the English language.
I'm not fluent enough in French to know if the subjunctive mood there is
merely a vestigial category (as in those English clichés, "Long Live the
Queen", or "Heaven help us!" &c) or if it has retained its integrity and
does provide access to broader perspectives regarding how the future
(might/could/will) unfold.

I think that part of the historical spectacle which Pynchon presents in
_M&D_ is the way that this language/text/discourse - ranging from the maps
and clocks and alterations to the physical environment to the very structure
of the medium of verbal communication (and the types and extent of
representations that this structure allows) - is imposed on other
natural/cultural spaces. The spread of European culture and 'civilisation'
was effected, in large part, by a process of 'conversion', and this had both
a religious and a linguistic aspect to it (as well as the rather more
obvious and immediate political and economic 'incentives').

The other point I'd reiterate is that the temporal perspective of Pynchon's
fictive mode - the logic of the narratives - has been pretty much constant
from _V._ on. The pretence of contemporaneity in the manner and mode of
narrative disclosure in _GR_ is the same as it is in _M&D_, it's just that
the distance between the 'now' of the reading and the 'then' of the
narrative perspective/s is greater in the latter novel, and thus more
unfamiliar.

I do think that there is a world outside language/s (grammar), but I think
that it is language which constructs our perception of that world.

Anyway, in good time - I hope - we'll come to the "mystic Chinaman", Capt.
Zhang, and his tri-continental "*Feng-Shui* jobs", which are "yet one more
hope in the realm of the Subjunctive". (542-3) Perhaps now's as good a time
as any to ask whether people would like to extend the current reading beyond
Part One, and, if so, whether or not we should have a brief hiatus over the
Xmas-New Year period.

best



on 25/11/01 2:13 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> I think what I might have been referring to as a SIDE ISSUE was my own nagging
> feeling of reverse progress in having moved from West to East rather than
> recapitulating the course of American Empire. Unfortunately there's never any
> compensating relief of feeling less implicated  in the mapping and polluting
> of
> our dear country. :-  But anyway I do see that the subjunctive  to declarative
> sentence cited by Rob is key to the paragraph and the book.   I will  have to
> think a bit more about the linguistic imperialism idea. True the paragraph
> uses
> grammatical terms--declarative and subjunctive--to suggest the closing off of
> the what-might-have been and the being stuck with the already-determined. But
> does the tendency to drop  the use of subjunctive moods from language imply
> any
> kind of savaging of possibilites in the world outside grammar. If there is any
> world out side of grammar??? Interesting idea.
> 
> With regard specifically to mapping,  in the two sentences
> 
> J'ai peur que M & D dressent une carte.
> 
> and
> 
> I'm afraid that M & D are drawing a map.
> 
> does the French use of the subjunctive give the sentence a different meaning
> than adheres to the English version? Charles DeGaulle would have said yes. But
> would we p-listers?
> 
> This whole discussion reminds me and probably everyone else of the famous
> Turner
> thesis about the closing of the American Frontier which was officially
> declared
> to have happened in 1893.  Frederick Jackson Turner's idea was that the
> expanding frontier was what gave  America it specialness.  And now it was no
> more. Or was it? But let's not get into that.
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway. Nice ideas, Rob.
> 
> P.
>