How people read the Pyncher (was Re: Charles Hollander's Essay)

[cathy ramirez]

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Petillon and, perhaps ironically, given his
> cryptographic bent, I take as reading Lot 49 as
> presenting a bit of a Purloined Letter, "secrets"
> hidden in plain sight.  By the time of Vineland
> (setting, publication), such "secrets" aren't even
> so well hidden ...

 A common complaint about VL is that when the 
insidious and ambiguous THEM/THEY/FIRM/Gnostics are
exposed through overt political references, Pynchon's
paranoid prose, certainly one of the things that makes
GR a great novel, suffers or is even reduced to
political/nostalgic screed. 

I'm not saying that Dave Monroe shares this opinion. 



Are THEY exposed in VL? Or are THEY absent from VL?
Niether. 

In VL, THEY  are not equal to
Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Oil/FEMA/Etc. 

In GR, THEY/THEM/FIRM/ are not equal to IG Farben and
the US Military Industrial Complex--GE/Standard
Oil/&Co. 

So, is VL a lesser novel because by the the time P
publishes it the secrets about how governemts and
businesses operate THEY have been exposed?  No. THEY
still operate in VL. The same paranoid irony continues
to operate. But just as in GR, THEY are not equal to
actual political/business machinery. 

Certainly the connections between THEM/THEY and actual
political/business persons/events/ are there in both
novels. But making the the connections to
Nixon/Reagan/FEMA/Oil is only part of the paranoid
quest. In fact, Pynchon can not expect his readers to
look it all up and check it all out. He drops the
clues all over the novel. We pick up fragments of the
rocket or the grail or the bible or the Word like
Oedipas or Stencils or Slothrops on a Quest. But we
are always, as Slothrops for example, St. George after
the fact searching for a needle in a hay-stack. And
what we are looking for is constantly changing shape
and form and meaning. We are like Dorothy looking
first for a way home and then a way to OZ and then a
brain, heart, courage, Witch's broom, America. But the
novels play with us. The narrators encourage us to
pick up the clues and make the connections. We are
tossed from a positive "religious" paranoia (what
helps us make sense of the world by making
connections) to an operation paranoia (some protection
from our own 
fragmented and solipsistic discoveries and fears--the
rocket or text has OUR name on /in it) to Paranoia
(capital P paranoia--everything is connected) to
anti-paranoia (nothing is connected or all is
ambiguity and indeterminate). We could call this
Modern reader & Postmodernist text.   

Reading Hollander or Thoreen helps us see the
connections. Notice how many Notes both critiques
attach to their essays. In both, the notes are nearly
equal to the essays in length. In fact, they are
longer if we read all of Thoreen or all of Hollander
and if we check their sources. 

But if the connections are overt what is the value of
the poiltical readings these two critics offer? Why do
both critics need so many notes to make the
connections if they are obvious? Are they only obvious
to a super-insightful political reader of Pynchon? 
Can only those readers with a "magic eye" see through
the surface and down to the extra dimenstions and make
the connections Pynchon wants us to make? That, to
some, smacks of elitism. But that's a rather silly
complaint because any critical reading of Pynchon may
be accused of elitism. Criticism, to certain extent,
is by nature, elitist in this regard. 

The benifits of Thoreen or Hollander are many. But the
most important thing that these politically perceptive
critics do, as far as I'm concerned, is to provide not
a way into the texts, but a way out of them. Of course
Pynchon's texts provide a way out all on their own.
Just as there is no way out for the characters in his
books, there are many ways out for the reader. 





 
 




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