MDDM World-as-text

jbor jbor at bigpond.com
Sun Aug 11 16:15:22 CDT 2002


Otto wrote:

> I'm quite sure that this it what Pynchon is doing, that his WW-II as
> presented in GR isn't the historical war. If Steven Weisenburger is right
> about the dates (December 18, 1944 as the time of the first five chapters),
> it is interesting to note that there isn't a V2-hit on London reported that
> day; only on Lüttich (Liege) and Antwerpen (I found out due to an
> offlist-conversation with Douglas Lannark recently). It makes sense to me
> that Pynchon carefully has chosen *that* day in order *not* to be a realist:

Except that the "Incoming mail" (6) which Pirate sees in the first chapter
is the one with the message from Katje in it (71-2) which lands near
Greenwich (11). It doesn't explode: all that's left is the graphite cylinder
which Pirate comes and picks up (20).

The "Any gum, chum?" rescue of the "little girl" happened "[y]esterday", and
she'd been "[t]rapped there for two days" (24), so you'd need to work back
to December 14 or 15, 1944, but I'm not sure that Weisenburger's dating
schemas are totally reliable. I know Douglas has done some work on that.

I'd argue that the more salient "realist" detail is Slothrop recalling "last
September when the rockets came" (21), and in particular that "Friday
evening, last September" when the first V-2 hit:

"The moment was 6:43:16 British Double Summer Time ... " (26)

I think that Pynchon's text in GR does engage with the historical war, just
as his text in M&D engages with the historical Mason and Dixon.

Thanks for the quotes from Barth's Friday book. As you say, the same sort of
world-as-text/text-as-world ideas figure prominently and often in Pynchon's
fiction, and are given voice in Derrida also.

best





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