MDDM Ch. 70 Prolegomena

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ch. 70 Prolegomena
>
> Otto wrote:
>
> HOW?
> > >
> > >   1) Carnival
> > >   2) quest-motif serves to test philosophical truths
> > >   3) the trilevelled construction of "earth," a "nether world"
> > >   and an "olympus"
> > >   4) dissolution or merging of identities, in particular, the
> > >   motif of the double.
> > >   5) extraordinary freedom of philosophical invention within
> > >   the plot
> > >   6) combination of free fantasy, symbolism and --on
> > >   occasion--the mystical religious element with the crude
> > >   naturalism of low life
> > >   7) the concern with ultimate philosophical positions
> > >   8) the experimental fantasticality in the handling of
> > >   perspective which can imperceptibly shift from ant's to
> > >   bird's view
> > >   9) eccentric or scandalous behaviour--spectacular
> > >   stomach-turning passages
> > >   10) utopian--or, to be more accurate, dystopian--elements of
> > >   the quest motif
> > >   11) the juxtaposition of items normally distant, often in
> > >   oxymoronic combinations
> > >   12) the parody of various genres and the mixture of prose
> > >   and verse diction
> > >   13) the variety of styles
> > >   15) topicality and publicistic quality--WWII novel that
> > >   illustrates ideological issues of the 1960s
> >
> Check out Robert L. McLaughlin's essay "Theories Of Land Tenure And The
> Charismatic Line In Mason & Dixon, page 799, Oklahoma City University
> Law Review, Vol. 24, #3, fALL 1999, 'Thomas Pynchon And The Law'
>

I will certainly in a few minutes do as I read all links you are & others
are posting, and it's been some time since I read the McLaughlin essay.

>
> Doug hit it right on the nose--"Socage tenure becomes associated with an
> ideology of control, in which land and people must be named, defined,
> and categorized so as to be made understandable and controllable."
>

Doug is only able to hit below the belt or how do you judge his "Earth
calling"-post? As you said some time ago, he has lost his credibility.

>
> See M&D.487 "ALL ARE TEXT"
>
> This idea, that the world is text to be read is ridiculed harshly by
> Thomas Pynchon.
> The world is not a text to be read or written or controlled, although
> this is the "book" many of his characters, even nations,  fall into.
> This is the idea that most peoples of the world are the victims of.
>

I absolutely agree and you shouldn't deliberately misunderstand Robert. Of
course Pynchon critisizes logocentrism on M&D 487 and elsewhere.

> The world was here before the text and it will be here, we hope, long
> after most of the texts humans have written are gone or have become
> meaningless.  We may  write texts about the world, but in so doing we
> don't create it, or create an alternative world, but only a textual one.
>

Right, see the Barth-stuff  I've posted. Or as David Lodge says: "(.) the
beginning of a novel is a threshold, separating the real world from the
world the novelist has imagined."
(The Art of Fiction, p. 5)

>
> If there is only one world who created it?
> Big question addressed by almost every religion that is or ever was.
>

No, the religions don't ask, they pretend to have the answer.

> I don't smash religion here. I don't practice any religion and I'm
> certainly not a christian. My gods if have any, are of this world and in
> this world--the sun, the oceans, the waves and winds. But, I know, like
> it or not, that the great world religions continue to govern the ways in
> which the majority of human beings live in the world.

Absolutely agreed.

>
> You can blame religion for all our problems, but that's no different
> than blaming man and women for all our problems. Kinda like what the
> Ancient Jews came up when their world went wrong. You can blame
> Christianity if you like, but it's a fools argument, it's  a sophomore's
> rant,  bombastic polemics indeed. In M&D, Pynchon puts this sophomore's
> rant where it belongs, in the mouth of a young lad home from college.
> Education, in the West at least, involves secularization. It should,
> although it doesn't, obviously, make more people more tolerant, more
> mature.
>

Logocentrism, meta-histories, etc. all that has been said here repeatedly.
I'm not giving up the "jargon" only because you don't like it.

>
> "for example, the Catholic Church). The individual is dominated by
> tradition."
>
> "One could view this as a Protestant mode of consciousness."
>
> http://www.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html
>
>
> This kind of crap appeals to young rebels, young sophomores. And they
> may need to have their ideas shaken up, but we can't take it too
> seriously.
>

If I remember correctly I have posted this link too? It's not that bad as
you want to make it. At least it's short and in plain simple words. And
about the youngsters remember what *he* says near the end of the SL-Intro.

(snip)
>
> Lots of different ideas on this one. Robert may reject the world,
> calling it a christian text, but he can't deny what I wrote, the sun or
> the moon or the wind or the smile on a human face. I said nothing about
> a christian world. This is only Robert's way of tossing in the towel.
>

Robert doesn't reject the world, I haven't read this in any of his posts.

> on page 801 McLaughlin says,
>
> "I have argued elsewhere that the interpretive conundrum of Pynchon's
> GR---...----can be addressed through Bakhtinian theory."
>
> Theory! Only a theory. Useful, like the Postmodern theories of
> literature or texts. All very useful provided we don't forget that we
> are dealing with a text and a theory about it.  P's novels are not
> postmodern because theorists of postmodernism have made them so.
>

Absolutely agreed, the way Pynchon has written his first novels enabled
theorists to develop postmodern literary theory. But Pynchon definitely has
read Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and others and has incorporated those
philosophical thoughts into his literature.

> Moreover, postmodern theorists do not agree even on what makes a novel
> postmodern.
>

Right, but they are very clear about what is not.

>
> While there may be some consensus among theorists as to the obvious
> elements of the postmodern, the differences are far more important.
> Where they agree, more often than not, it when they admit that they can
> not define postmodernism, but they can define Modernism. One of the most
> obvious failings of postmodern theory is its failure, except when it
> reduces Modernism to a bunch of bad christian platitudes, to distinguish
> itself from Modernism.
>

I admit having trouble to understand the last sentence.

>
> http://www.uga.edu/ugapress/books/shelf/0820316687.html

Coincidentally I've read this yesterday because I'm adding something to my
webpages (gr4.htm) on Dec. 18, 1944 and did a web search on Steven
Weisenburger, looking for an e-mail address to ask him about the GR-dates.

I don't believe in a decisive definition of postmodernism -- by definition!
And I'm eager for a new term 'cause this one seems to be very contaminated
with prejudices.

> In any event, back to the book, the one about Catfish & the Worm.
>

"They've got catfish on the table, they've got gospel in the air..."
(can't remember who sang this)

Thanks again for pointing to Nietzsche (Gay Science), that gave me a nice
reading evening.

Otto

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