MDDM World-as-text

[jbor]

on 12/8/02 3:47 AM, Doug Millison at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> Perception and text aren't identical, however.  Just
> close your eyes and listen to music, or smell
> something nice (or not so nice), or touch something --
> you don't need text or words for those experiences;
> you only need "text" to talk about them, analyze them,
> slice and dice them, examine their truth value or
> performative value or any of the million things that
> thinking people do with words.

As I noted, "text", in the definition we've been using here, isn't confined
to words. And I think science can nail down most human sensory equipment and
data nowadays.

> Slothop blissful in
> the experience of that rainbow, finally,

Good example: " [...] he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just
feeling natural. . . . " (626)

Pynchon has certainly textualised Slothrop's epiphany here ("not a thing in
his head ... feeling natural" - the one a metaphor, the other a cultural
construct), but I agree that the description is probably meant to indicate a
moment of "pure being", an experience which is somehow "beyond" text, and
the fact that Slothrop subsequently does manage to escape or transcend the
fictional text is undoubtedly symbolic as well.

I'd agree with you that quite a few of Pynchon's characters yearn to get
outside of the self and the subjective (Mason, for example). But I'd
re-emphasise that this is not possible for a human individual (the fictional
character, Slothrop, notwithstanding). I'd say that it's a belief that one
is able to get beyond the self in this way, that one is able to know and
possess the ultimate "truth" - whether this "text" be constituted in
scientific, religious or ideological terms - which is the author of far
greater brutality and injustice within Pynchon's fictional vision.

best