SLSL quantum physics

[jbor]

on 12/2/03 6:04 AM, Keith McMullen at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

>>>> rather than presenting the reader with how the world "is", Pynchon
> is constantly showing how the world is perceived to be, and how the
> processes of perception can and do actually alter the way the world "is".<<<
> 
> Yes. And that is why there is so much bickering about 'what Pynchon says'
> because he says a lot, in scores of voices, from scores of perspectives, to
> present a rather strangely 'realistic' view of the complexity of it all.
> 

I don't disagree with this, but I'd offer a couple of reservations. For
example, what Pynchon says about himself and his work in the 'Intro' to _SL_
is a totally different proposition to what characters and narrative agents
and so forth say and think in the fiction. (I don't buy the "he's having us
on" palaver; it's just a way of dismissing what Pynchon does say in the
'Intro' because it doesn't fit with how certain readers want things to be.)

And, sometimes, particularly in the early work, what the narrative voice
says in the fiction can be almost unequivocally ascribed to the author. When
Pynchon apologises for the "voice" in 'Low-lands' and admits to it being his
"own at the the time" (11-12), I think we can legitimately make the
connection between Flange's admission in the story about why he didn't tell
a sea story, and the quantum metaphor he uses to explain his reasons, and
the rationale behind Pynchon's writing of the story itself. I think it
points up the fact that the narrative is operating in a reflexive way.

Another example I'd give is the bit from _V._ where some narrative voice
jumps out of the text and starts listing newspaper headlines for a
particular day in the "present time" of the story, and then comments:

    People read what news they wanted to and each accordingly built his
    own rathouse of history's rags and straws. (p.225)

This paragraph in _V._ always strikes me as another example where Pynchon
himself is peeking through the curtain of the fiction.

As Pynchon develops as a writer, from _GR_ on particularly, these
interpolations and expository passages are much better integrated into the
fabric of the narrative, and it's harder to point to something and assert
conclusively that it's "what Pynchon says". And part and parcel of this is
that the fictional representation in Pynchon's work, his "perspectivism", is
often both "strangely realistic" - mimetic even, the way things "are" in the
world - and indefinite or indeterminate, left up to the reader to decide.

best