It's raining Tapestries & Stencils again

[William Zantzinger]

Elaine M.M. Bell, Writer wrote: 


Struggling with the--to me--unreadable "Under The
Rose" I am forced to wonder if it is all an elaborate
and
intentional intellectual mind game.

And Paul Mackin wrote: 


The kind of frustration and perplexity expressed here
with respect to TSR is likely to be fairly widespread.
The remedy is to always keep reminding ourselves that
these stories are the early apprentice work of someone
who--it just happened to turn out--became some years
later a highly accomplished and admired writer. In
other words these stories aren't interesting because
they are good but because Pynchon wrote them. Not that
examining them in a manner we might use to evaluate
the work of a seasoned literary or commercial writer
is not OK or even useful, but we have to be prepared
for the consequences.

And David Morris asked us to consider whether or not
Pynchon is simply playing a literary game and if that
game is heartless, cynical, amoral. 

I submit, that the principal reason for reading these
stories and not some other "amazing" works of genius
or whatever we might choose to read after the family
is couched like potatoes in front of the Tube or after
our lovers are soundly sleeping or while the subway
transports us to the factory, is that these "not so
amazing"  stories were written by a guy named Pynchon
and he is our pretext for communicating. 

What are the consequences of communicating here? 
That's a question only you can answer. 

So interwoven are the aesthetic responses to the books
we read here, that when the meaning of one word in a
text (Frogs, Fuzzy, served, theater/theatre….) is
changed, it can affect how we read the entire work.
I'm reminded of a critical discussion of a passage
from Melville's White- Jacket that hung on a misprint.
 

(Tom's editor is busy working  in Tom's library
Tom and his agent are watching the Tube)

Tom's editor: Say, page 378 line 12, is that Theater
ER or Theatre RE? 

Tom's agent: What should we watch tonight? 

Tom: ER

Tom's editor: Got it! 

Much interweaving can get us all under a tapestry
pulling separate threads, changing the shape, the
design, the pattern. At which point we are happy when
a rigid stencil uncovers our folly, exposes us to the
light, when he yanks our musical blanket and directs
out attention to the disco ball hanging from the
ceiling next to the pig fetus and the mistletoe. 



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