douglas fowler

[John Bailey]

Terrance, this was a really fine post, eloquent and considered.

I'd rather read Toni Morrison too, and was thinking of her stuff when Kyle's 
Call for recommended reading came up the other day. But I didn't really want 
to recommend her, for the same reason I don't recommend Pynchon's books to 
many people, and I agree that the inclusion of his works in university 
courses can turn people off him for good (and maybe it is for good, I still 
don't know). Actually, I don't recommend fiction very much at all, because I 
find reading too private an experience, even on the bus.

But that's my problem, and I'm working through it.

I found it interesting that Kyle's Call was answered in two ways: sources 
which will make sense of GR, and fiction which will help one appreciate it 
more. (Of course, stating that there were two sorts of response is drawing 
an arbitrary line, I know. I'm not trying to hang much weight on it, though. 
Also, sorry about mixing metaphors, there.) It's also interesting how some 
people here focus on certain fields of inquiry referenced in P (eg War, 
Religion, Intertextuality) which aren't of much interest to others. This is 
mostly good, and I've learnt a lot from it.

Most of the time, when the big sticks start getting waved around this list, 
its because someone thinks that what they get out of Pynchon isn't what 
others are getting out. Or, alternatively, when they perceive someone else 
thinking that (which can just be misreading their posts or use of language). 
That's what I feel anyway, and it isn't really my place to make that 
statement, I guess, and I regret writing it immediately. But I rarely have 
time to edit a post, so there ya go.


>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: douglas fowler
>Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 16:21:42 -0500
>
>
>
>Otto wrote:
> >
> > Terrance, do you consider Fowler's approach not postmodern? He's been 
>the
> > one that got me hooked on binary oppositions.
>
>I should not have used that stupid word. It's not a matter of Modern,
>Postmodern, Postmodernist. The matter is, should a person spend $100 on
>the book and my advice is that if I were that person with $100 to spend
>I would not buy Fowler, I would buy a used copy of Weisenburger and >take 
>Rosita out to lunch. And, if I got her out for brunch I would buy
>Rilke's novel or that new book that caused such a fuss on the Oprha
>Winfrey show. Yeah, Moore is a good read, although I was disappointed
>with the part on the gods in GR and I'm not sure he got the Norbert
>Weinder correct at all. The chapters on science are very good because he
>goes through some basic stuff and explains that Pynchon is not a rocket
>scientist but a novelist.
>
>Kyle, I would rather read Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon than Fowler on
>Pynchon any day. But that's just how I feel about it.  I would love to
>teach GR so I could have an excuse for reading it again and again and I
>may get the chance to do just that, but I got to thinking maybe that is
>a very selfish thing to do because I think half the students would not
>finish it. Life, if you are blessed, is choices. Harold Bloom once said,
>we can't read them all. Coming from him that's good advice. What do want
>to read? Man, that's not too bad. You can read Fowler or Faulkner,
>Pynchon or Spiderman, the Village Voice or the Daily News. A nice thing
>about Pynchon-l is that we all like to read and talk about what we have
>read or might read or tried and didn't like. Most of us don't lioke this
>internet list stuff as much as reading a good book or going to the park,
>but we do have an opportunity to talk books with other people who give a
>shit sometimes.
>
>
> >
> > You may not like the idea but GR *is* structured the way of the War of 
>the
> > Worlds, one of GR's theses is that the economy has become like something
> > supernatural that threatens "our" world (the core of all gothic).
>
>Structured? I don't know about that. I'll agree that this "thesis" is
>one of the things going on in the book:  the Gnostic economy--the
>business of the War, conspiracy of markets, synthesis and control of
>technologies and labor, alliances expediently made and unmade.... and
>that Fowler's comparison has some merit, but I can't go so far as to
>agree that TWW and GR share a common structure.   It seems to me that
>GR, if it has a structure, is structured by the trajectory of
>rocket/Rocket in the theatre/Theater.
>
> >
> > Far worse you say, but I'd say that his whole genre *is* this 
>indictment.
> > Not anti-American, not anti-Christian, not anti-Catholic, not
> > anti-Protestant, but an indictment that the way the world has been run
> > before and past WW-2 by Western Christian civilization will (maybe it's
> > still so, even after 1990?) lead to the end of all mankind.
>
>I beg to differ, in GR at least, the Western Christians have no more
>control over the running of the world than the Eastern non-Christians or
>anyone else. Little old Slothrop and his penis seem to be controlling
>quite a lot of the world in the novel. Moreover, those that think they
>can control the world or that they are somehow in control of nature are
>fatally mistaken.




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