MDMD Grief & Insanity

[Jasper Fidget]

Hmm, well, I admit to imaginating, but I cannot read a novel *as* fiction
until the text tells me to do so in some manner (some trigger that pushes me
outside the text and leaves me staring at the book viz book), which I
haven't found yet in M&D.  (I'm thinking here of overt intrusions into the
text from the "real" world; for instance when, in VN's Pale Fire, VN
himself, complete with Hawaiian shirt, strolls across the page and the
library simultaneously.  Surely, such intrusions can be found in GR, but
that book should not teach me how to read this one.)

Jasper Fidget

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Panetta" <judy at firemist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 10:00 AM
Subject: RE: MDMD Grief & Insanity


> A-a-and like a mirror reflecting a mirror: Wicks is a liar and M&D is a
work
> of fiction. But I give points for imagination.
>
> JP
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
> Behalf Of Jasper Fidget
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:52 AM
> To: argirios zias; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: MDMD Grief & Insanity
>
>
> Or--while overthinking--what are the chances that Wicks is a liar?  It's
> stated he must continue to entertain the children in order to continue to
> feast upon their parents' hospitality and that he'd already run through
all
> manner of stories and tales; what happens when the storyteller runs out of
> stories to tell?--he makes them up.  (He does tell, after all, about
talking
> dogs eg.)  Storyteller of course, if not liar; why should we assume the
> story of M&D will differ so much from the story of the Accursed Ruby of
> Mogok--selected for its "moral usefulness", we readers, "as usual, not
being
> consulted in this."  (p. 7)
>
> Perhaps his lateness to the funeral is due to his not knowing about it
until
> the news had spread to him (rather than by direct notification).  So
> far--and it's my first trip through, and without supporting materials--his
> adult audience seems to indulgently regard him in the same manner adults
> today watch television (while I'm at it: maybe Wicks is a kind of
> television, a spectacle, the same kind of flickering lightshow with the
same
> kind of effect).  Just to go critical mass with this: maybe Wicks is
Pynchon
> and we are Pitt and Pliny; don't we respond in a similar manner when we
hear
> a forecast of a Hanging: "Excellent!"  Or-or Wicks is History, yeah...!
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "argirios zias" <argirioszias at hotmail.com>
> To: <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:55 AM
> Subject: Re: MDMD Grief & Insanity
>
>
> >
> > Well, I was thinking, perhaps overt hinking, what with all these bad
lines
> > being drawn and nobody's right if everybody's got a bomb, that Wicks is
> > crazy. Well, I think Oediapa, and Zoyd, Slothrop, Stencil, and even
> > Benny, maybe most of the narrators of P's novels are.insane.
> >
> > As regards dear Ben, I simply can't believe a man would leave a girl
like
> > Fina.
> >
> > Anyway, we get twisted all up and around with Wicks, kinda like Stencil.
> We
> > twist into subjunctive, into
> > the quest for what might have been but for remembrances disturbed and
> > history tangling everything  up in the deep. Dive deep, Ishmael.
> >
> > Isn't it possible that Wicks, who didn't get to attend Mason's funeral,
> nor
> > his burial, is in a state of
> > delirium brought on by his grief? And that his not having attended
Mason's
> > burial, is the cause of his insanity?
> >
> > We all have different ways of dealing with loss, with grief, with death.
> > That's cool. It will help me to deal with all this madness, if I can
talk
> > about the madness in a fiction by Thomas R. Pynchon.
> >
> > So, I will.
> >
> > Gary
> >
> >
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>
>
>
>