McHoul & Wills' chapter Re: SLSL Intro "Almost But Not Quite Me ..."

[jbor]

Yes, I agree, and I have to add that I was quite surprised to see it posted
(ad nauseam) without either qualification or acknowledgement that it is so
irrelevant and poorly-conceived. When there's so much other critical
commentary dealing with the 'Intro' the fact that this particular chapter
was "transferred" here to the extent it has been seemed to me to be a covert
endorsement of its contents. Perhaps it wasn't. Who knows.

I read, or tried to read, other of McHoul and Wills' stuff on Pynchon way
back when and the rest of it is equally poor, both near-unintelligible and
devoid of any actual substance at the same time. It strikes me that this
sort of pretentious gobbledygook, bowdlerising ideas from Foucault, Barthes,
Derrida, Freud et al. and then misapplying these in a seemingly arbitrary
way to anything and everything that comes to mind is exactly the sort of
stuff which both made possible and became the target of the infamous Alan
Sokal hoax.

Apart from the fact MalignD points out that they make thoroughly
non-existent connections with words and phrases taken at random from
Pynchon's work (Pynchon's dt pun from _Lot 49_ which becomes "*d*oubting
*T*homas in McHoul & Wills' puerile pastiche is another example), the thing
which most amazes and appals me is that they rabbit on for 30 or 40 pages in
a chapter ostensibly devoted to Pynchon's 'Intro' to _SL_ and yet manage to
say barely anything at all about what is actually written in it. The
comments that they do make, and the stuff they take from critical theory -
about "differ/defer", identity, authorship et al. - apply to any and every
text. Laughably, they don't even seem aware that what they are writing, and
the particular theories they are appealing to, apply reflexively to their
very own current text as well.

best


on 27/11/02 3:47 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> Rob Jackson writes:
> 
> <<Pynchon is discussing 'TSI' and the "old Baedeker trick again" of shifting
> his own Long Island "hometown ... landscape and the experiences I grew up
> with" to the Berkshires (20-21). In fact, what he's overtly saying he's not
> doing, and what McHoul & Wills seem to be trying to say he is doing, is
> adopting this "strategy of transfer" in the 'Intro'. It's quite a bizarre
> tactic on the critics' part, shamelessly ignoring the semantic thrust and
> context of Pynchon's commentary. Of course, in the context of what he means
> by the phrase, Pynchon's personal recounts and reminiscences in the 'Intro'
> don't deliberately displace his own experiences at all. These are
> acknowledged precisely for what they are.>>
> 
> And he is correct, but citing not the only unfortunate tactic in this hapless
> essay, which proceeds in no small part by similarly using a term in one
> context, then reusing it in another, in order to make points that are, to be
> kind, dubious.
> 
> The use of the word "transfer" begins with one of the writers reminiscing
> about decals--e.g., pictures from a comic strip--that came in packs of gum
> and which could be transferred onto the skin, about which he says "Allow to
> dry just enough--not too much--and peel it away.  To leave behind a perfect
> trace.  This was not a reproduction, a *mere* tracing from a comic, it was
> *the* picture text," this idea of "perfect transfer" important to the point
> he attempts to make in what follows, in a context not remotely applicable.
> (It is worth noting that, even on its own terms, his description is entirely
> false; such decals were precisely copies of something else and, as is known
> to anyone old enough to have familiarity with such decals, a "perfect"
> transfer was, if not impossible, all but.)
> 
> The writers then take this idea of "transfer" and compare it to copying LPs
> onto cassette tape, the analaog loss of quality in the copy process referred
> to by the writers as "drop out."  This term is then used to make an otherwise
> nonexistent connection to Pynchon referring to people in the 50s and 60s
> "dropping out."
> 
> Et cetera.