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

[jbor]

on 30/11/02 9:23 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> I doubt if even M&W's aim was "to convince."  I believe the book was put
> together pretty much as a lark. It certainly reads that way. They took
> note early on of the fact that Pynchon criticism had to date been with
> few exceptions what they called "humanistic." (Were they right in this?
> I'm definitely not well versed I believe what they meant by humanistic
> was non-method). Why not try deconstruction, they said. And did. Perhaps
> it is not very good deconstruction. Perhaps deconstruction is no longer
> the method to apply to great writers. Once it could be demonstrated (by
> a few select semi-geniuses) that deconstruction applied to all writing
> (good and inferior) what was the point of gilding the lilly? But they
> did. 

The trouble with M&W's approach stems from the fact that it's more a type of
extreme subjectivism or "reader-response"-style analysis than actual
"deconstruction", although there are of course similarities and connections
there. While it does give the impression of being a joke, or a parody of
deconstructive criticism, because it's so far-fetched and self-indulgent, I
suspect that they're serious. But their most common manoeuvres are either to
distort or just totally ignore the text they're discussing.

best