MDMD: Outlaws revisited

[John Lundy]

On Friday, 21 September 2001 03:59, Paul Mackin [SMTP:paul.mackin at verizon.net] wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Lundy" <jlundy at gyk.com.au>
> 
> When readers see the text as open to a wide variety of
> > interpretations it is more likely that they're all wrong than that we're
> > witnessing authorial genius on a scale way beyond normal human
> > comprehension.
> 
> In other words no authorial genius at all. At least no genius in the art of
> helping the reader. Or perhaps only a genius in the art of helping the
> reader to see that he is beyond help. Is this a lesson by any chance the
> reader needs to absorb? Don't know for sure but don't think so. And it's
> bothersome that postmodernism counts as a kind of accomplishment that
> interpretation is left so open (and not only theoretically) because surely
> the downside to this is that where there is too much meaning there is also
> likely to be too little (your point I think). However I don't think that at
> this stage of the book there has been too much left open to interpretation.
> We've only been warned to be well advised not to take many of the ensuing
> events in the story  at face value. Having been through MDMD before I think
> this is the challenge to be kept in mind. Of course out and out fantasy will
> be no problem. It's the possibly real events we will have to decide about.
> Fortunately there will be many clues along the way as to what we should or
> should not believe. And of course I'm not implying in any way that anyone
> has said (yet) that the unrelieable narration is anything but an asset. If
> there are faults in the book they will lie elsewhere.
> 
>             P.
> 
Paul,

You're right of course, there will be clues.  Well hidden, as Pynchon said elsewhere "Like diamonds in the shit of smugglers"...