VLVL2 The Return of Weed Atman

[Tim Strzechowski]

>  Pynchon's novels only call attention to their own
>   signification, "which hang without reference, pointing like
>   a severed arm to nowhere in particular."
>

Yes, but a bit of an over-generalization, don't you think?  Many aspects of
the fantastic in Pynchon's works are indeed without reference and point "to
nowhere in particular" (the fantastic for its own sake, like in GR when
Pointsman and the lab mice burst into a Busby Berkeley dance routine, for
instance), but many aspects of the fantastic also *have* purpose, whether it
be social or political satire, allegory, literary parody, pop culture
allusion, etc.

Terrance's summation of, who is it?  Wood?  indicates that this person
perceives  Pynchon's works as "behav[ing] like allegories that refuse to
allegorize, allegory and the confusion of allegory, are what drive Pynchon's
books and his explicit politics."  While this is certainly true, it
unfortunately smacks of over-generalization of the fantastic in P's work.
Unlike many other writers, who employ the fantastic for pretty specific
purposes (Swift, Kafka, Tolkien, Heller, Vonnegut, etc.), Pynchon's is a
multifaceted hybrid of absurdism, satire, parody, pop allusiveness that
defies simple categorization. (One might even say that P's use of the
fantastic lacks the sustained control of writers like the aforementioned.
Is that true?  Or does the hybrid fantasy of Pynchon demonstrate method in
its madness?)

Respectfully,

Tim S.