Fact and friction

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: Fact and friction
>
> Forget fact and fiction. If all text is the same kind of fiction what is
> the sense of saying that the Foreword is fiction?  What does such a
> statement mean? The  Manhattan Phone book is a fiction. The Power Bar
> wrapper is a fiction,  Guliver's Travels is a fiction. Paradise Lost,
> Hamlet, the OED, a ticket to the opera, all are fiction. But surely
> Paradise Lost is not the same kind of fiction as Hamlet. Right? Is
> Hamlet the same kind of fiction as the Pynchon Foreword to Orwell's
> _1984_? If all text is fiction why do we need to start off saying so?
> There must be something about fiction, other than its being
> distinguished from fact that we can can about it. Like, there are
> different kinds of fiction. Clearly the Pynchon Foreword is not the same
> kind of fiction that GR is. Right? If GR is a postmodernist novel. What
> kind of fiction is the Foreword?
>

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don't have to worry about answers.

The Foreword is a foreword to a dystopian postmodern novel. Pynchon's
Foreword is an interpretation of literature, of the novel itself, of some of
Orwell's essays and parts of the official biography. This interpretation may
be right or wrong, it depends on the interpretation the single reader
applies to it.

The question is not was distinguishes fact from fiction. The assertion is
that most non-fictional texts in the end turn out to be as ficticious as
fiction, at least for some readers, within some contexts. Take for example
the "evidence" of Iraqui WMD presented to the UN by those master
storytellers Blair and Bush, Rumsfeld and Powell who are able to present
fictions as facts. They have produced a myth to convince silly people that
war can be a good thing. This is what fascists are doing too, but it doesn't
mean that B, B, R & P are fascists. They're just liars and I have chosen not
to  believe them.

The reason why I prefer Pynchon is because he's able to demonstrate how
ficticious historical "facts" are, I like him because he's not lying like
the others, like all those politicians (Schroeder, Chirac and Putin, a
terrorist himself, included) about the fictional character of his writing.
Did George Washington really smoke hemp, did Mason & Dixon smoke with him?
We'll never know.

Does Pynchon say that Churchill has been a fascist? No, he's not, but he
shows clearly that some (maybe inevitable to defend the homeland) measures
of wartime politics could be regarded as fascistic as the methods fascists
use to maintain their power, even in peace.

I like the Foreword because it's such a fine essay. It can be read merely as
a foreword to a dated book without any actual references, but at the same
time it can be read as a commentary to things going on in our liberal
democracies who are at war after September 11, 2001. This oscillation makes
it a great text in my opinion.

Otto