SLSL Intro "Almost But Not Quite Me ..."

[Dave Monroe]

>From Alec McHoul and David Wills, Writing Pynchon:
Strategies in Fictional Analysis (Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 1990), Ch. 5, "Almost But Not Quite Me
...," pp. 131-62 ...

"Copy a cassette tape on to another tape and there's
loss--drop out.  As Pynchon puts it, the 50s and 60s
were times of the dropout.  Our hunger was for the
authenticity of the transfer itself.... We want: no
loss, no difference.  Only transfer--sameness.  It is
this we associate with authenticity and originality:
the perfect copy.  This is the myth of 'our generation
of writers.'
   As Barthes puts it: myths do not need to be
falsehoods in order to be mythical still....  Myth is
myth because its 'speech' is 'depoliticised'.  And
this is precisely the situation of our myth of
transfer.  It is a myth which we have sought to trace
through the 'Introduction' to Pynchon's Slow Learner. 
Again he must be autobiographical, first person,
singular..." (p. 132)

"... its theme: the 'Pynchon' of the present berates
the apprentice 'Pynchon' of the late 50s and early 60s
for his youthful prosaic ungainliness.... this
severance between the former and the present could
mark a difference (or indeed a deferral) around which
the 'meaning' of the 'Introduction' could be seen to
emerge.  But the obvious problem then would be: what
of the relation of the supposedly 'present' Mr P?  The
problematising of the former Mr P. was of such
fascination that it almost eclipsed the harder problem
of the sepaking- or writing-position of the 'present'
one.
   "This present author/narrator/character (or what?)
seemed to elide the very difference or defferral of
meaning itself--to be copresent to (or with) the
reader, in the reading.  It looked more like imperfect
transfer than imperfect difference." (pp. 132-3)

"... not only the expected reference to one of the
Early Stories' narrator as 'almost but not quite me'
... but also a very unexpected way of referring to
'literary theft' (alias intertextuality) as 'a
strategy of transfer' ...
   "It is, then ... that we start our case for the
'present' Pynchon as theory of meaning." (pp. 133)

"... the 'Introduction' to Slow Learner could first be
approached via an odd mixture of several questions:
what is it (preface, story, autobiography)? who
writes, or is written (author, narrator, character)?
amd by what function of writing does it work, what
theory of meaning?... the questions are all on
equestion--that what is Introduced is a person, a
first person who, as author (at least) is a theory of
meaning." (p. 133)

"The psychological does not enetr into this business
at all--unless we assume taht there is some constant
someone 'on the other end'.  A psychological theory of
authorship and meaning gets us nowhere for it assumes
that the question of who or what writes is already
answered.
   "We need then to reconsider what this
'Introduction' means after something which could be
called 'decades of silence from Pynchon on the topic
of Pynchon'.  What it must mean, if recourse to
psychology is illegitimate, is that this 'event', this
supposed 'breaking cover' (which may be just another
coevring up), is no different from any other textual
event or occasion.  Its problems are the problems of
all the others.  Tempting as it may be, we ought
perhaps to resist reading the 'Introduction' as the
key to the stories which follow it." (pp. 134-5)

"... the general problematisation of 'the author' ..."
(p. 135)

"... for many readers, the return of a text to a
unique authorial origin ... is its main mark of
authenticity....  Author, as a category, is a very
powerful device ...." (p. 135)

"Barthes, for example ... has argued that we should
now consider the author-as-person to be 'dead', to be
no longer the unproblematic, automatic or default
basis for our categorisation and understanding of
texts.  Texts, argues Barthes, ought no longer to be
traced to a subjective origin ....  Instead, they
should be considered to have 'no other origin than
language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into
questions all origins'." (p. 135)

"... this is not too dissimilar to Foucault's
claim....  He is pointing to a new topic, to the
discursive practice of the 'author function', rather
than to 'author' as creative fountainhead." (p. 136)

"For Barthes, however, it (the author) ought not to be
so maintained." (p. 136)

"But there is another possible version of these
'sides' and strategies for their 'taking', on which
inhabits the margins of all our deliberations on
'Pynchon and authorship' ...." (p. 137)

   "The third theory of author or author-effects comes
by way of the Derridean notion of signature....
language is already written, such that the author
becomes author-as-writing...." (p. 137)

"... 'Signature event context,' where the point is
made that the signature is, like any utterance,
didvidd.  It simply cannot be constituted as singular
event but functions in terms of its iterability:

In order to function, that is, in order to be legible,
a signature must have a repeatable, iterable, imitable
form: it must be able to detach itself from the
present and singular intention of its production.  It
is its sameness which, in altering its identity and
singularity, divides the seal. [Derrida, "SEC," 228-9]
(p. 138)

"... the signature admits its own singularity--the
event which allows one to write cheques and so
on--even as it denies it by means of iterability--the
event which allows somneone else to forge your
cheque.... a model of the signing instance is the
trevller's cheque which always requires
countersigning.... the signature cannot of itself, as
a singular instance, guarantee authenticity or
authorization.  Instead it automatically calls for a
doubling of itself ....  Pynchon, as the first page of
Slow Learner makes clear, is not averse to reading his
early stories like returned cheuqes ...." (pp. 138-9)

"Still ... the Derridean idea of the signature, unlike
the position of the 'Introduction' as wee read it,
admits the peculiarities, even the uniqueness, of an
author's production ... but insists that those effects
will always be read outside of the context of their
production.  By contrast the 'Introduction', in at
least one sense, wants to head off the alterity of
contexts, to 'justify' and excuse the early Pynchon
stories by an authentic recapture of an originary
context....  For Derrida, by complet contrast, there
is no contradiction between the two positions; there
is a sameness, an idnetity, which nevertheless
functions as a difference ...." (p. 139)

"Hence the problematic we are addressing to the
'Introduction'--one which is, to repeat, by no means
its own preferred strategy--is not 'Who writes?" ...
nor is it the formalist relation between sign and
meaning ... it is, more simply ... 'What signs and
countersigns?'--with all of the doubling that this
admits and requires.  Moreover, instead of deamnding
and answer from teh 'Introduction', we instead prefer
simply to put this question up against its own
theoretical strategy which ... the text itself calls
explicitly 'a strategy of transfer' ([SL, "Intro," p.]
21)." (p. 140)

TO BE CONTINUED ...

... but, in the meantime, see ...

Barthes, Roland.  "The Death of the Author."
   Image-Music-Text.  Trans. Stephen Heath.
   New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.  142-8.

http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/whatis.htm

__________.  Mythologies.  Trans. Annette Lavers.
   New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Derrida, Jacques.  "Signature Event Context."
   Margins of Philosophy.  Trans. Alan Bass.
   Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.  307-30.

http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/sec.html

Foucault, Michel.  "What Is an Author?"
   Language, Counter-Memory and Practice.
   Ed. Donald F. Bouchard.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell
   UP, 1977.  124-7.

http://foucault.info/documents/foucault.authorFunction.en.html

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