Walk this way

[jbor]

on 9/8/02 11:43 AM, Tim Strzechowski at dedalus204 at attbi.com wrote:

> I question the importance of "get[ting] it."
> How necessary is it for the reader (critic/student/whatever) to "get it"
> when reading any text?

Doug made a distinction between college sophomores and readers who do "get
it" when reading Pynchon's work, and another category which he labelled
"critics", who, in his opinion don't really "get it". As I pointed out, the
whole argument was faulty, based as it was on an artificial distinction
between "readers" and "critics", and an equally ill-defined distinction
between "get[ting] it" and having a "'comprehensive' understanding" of ... I
guess, "it".

I don't disagree with you or Otto, that as a postmodern writer part of what
there is to "get" in Pynchon's work is that those multiple and sometimes
mutually-exclusive possibilities are present in the text to begin with, and
that "there are no facts, only interpretations". Most readers seem to "get"
that. And I'd say that recognising that there are unanswerable questions
raised by a text *is* "get[ting] it". I also strongly agree with Otto's
reminder that as a postmodern author Pynchon situates himself as a reader
vis à vis prior texts (cf. intertextuality, appropriation, pastiche etc).

What I strongly disagree with is the argument that Pynchon wants his texts
to be incomprehensible, that he is deliberately dancing away "several steps
ahead of his readers", which is a cop-out. At the very least I think we can
assume that Pynchon intended for his novels to be published, to be read, and
for his readers to engage in acts of interpretation. It strikes me as quite
odd that anyone would have a problem with that.

best

> Is not "getting it" a mark of deficiency on the reader's part?
> Can a writer produce a work that makes perfect sense to him/herself, yet no
> readers "get it," and still be called a writer who isn't being esoteric?
> If I produce a literary work that raises more questions than offers answers
> (like, say, biblical text), is there really anything to "get" in the first
> place, other than the questions raised?
> 
> I cannot help but harken back to John Gardner's _The Resurrection_, a
> wonderful book that is a challenging to "get" as anything else we might
> consider. But I question whether "get[ting] it" is the a. questions raised,
> b. insights offered, c. worth the trouble of differentiating.
> 
> 
> "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com> and Doug Millison at
> millison at online-journalist.com wrote:
>> 
>>> I think P writes in a way that a wide audience can understand
>>> -- far more than some of his academic critics might give him credit for,
>>> even college sophomores can get it.  His work speaks to many people on
> many
>>> different levels.
>> 
>> Critics are readers. It's an artificial distinction distinction to try and
>> say otherwise.
>> 
>>> I don't pretned to know  P's intentions.  But I don't think any critic
> can
>>> "get ahead" of him -- he wrote the book, his critics come later, none of
>>> them have the insight into the text that Pynchon had, and none of them
> ever
>>> will.  That's not to say that the critics don't have interesting things
> to
>>> say, because sometimes they do.  But I don't think they'll get to the
>>> bottom of what P wrote, and I don't think they'll ever get anything like
> a
>>> "comprehensive" understanding of his texts.  Do you disagree?
>> 
>> There seems to be a contradiction in your argument here between the "wide
>> audience" and "college sophomores" who do "get it", and the contention
> that
>> there's another group of readers ("critics" is your label) who aren't able
>> to "get to the bottom of what P wrote". There's no real difference between
>> "get[ting] it" and having a "'comprehensive' understanding" of a text. If
>> you don't have such an understanding - of a word, a phrase, a sentence, or
> a
>> whole book - then you just aren't "get[ting] it", in my opinion.
>> 
>> best
>> 
>> 
>> on 7/8/02 10:34 AM, Doug Millison at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:
>> 
>>> I'm satisfied that Pynchon is several steps ahead of
>>> his readers.
>> 
>> 
> 
>