Down these mean streets ...

[Paul Nightingale]

... a man must walk.

Thought it was time for a new heading. Orwell as protagonist-sleuth of a
Pynchon-text.

Terrance wrote:

> > > Inquiry,
> > > solves problems.
> >
> > Inquiry might aim to address the appropriate problems (ie which
> > questions to ask). By itself it solves nothing.
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry, should have been REsolves (to separate (something) into
> constituent parts) problems.
> 
>
Signifiers sliding all over the place. Thrown a dummy, I address
problems. REvising, you break down or deconstruct problems. Addressing
one problem-text we discover it signifies several problem-texts, which
in turn signify more, and on and on, an unbroken chain of signifiers.
Let's agree on the prosaic and the poetical (the latter signed by the
author, whereas the former is only borrowed, or co-opted).

Hence the question of property, the textual arrangement of discourses of
ownership. Prosaic information doesn't, not really, belong to P; he
didn't invent it, can't lay claim to Blair-into-Orwell. 1984 is O's
property because it bears his name. P's Foreword considers the
historical beginnings (not origins) of the text, the pre-texts that
carry the novel away from its owner.

All texts stand in for that which is absent. All storytellers seek to
REvisit the world and REpresent it.
 
> Indeed, P's writing is
> > about endless inquiry, any number of interweaved, endless inquiries
that
> > never reach their goal.
> 
> In my opinion, P's writing is not Analysis (a disentanglement) or
> Inquiry (Resolving of problems) but a "progressive knotting into"
> oppositions, conflicts, and paradoxically sustained agons. Oedipa is
> still waiting for ... she's not Oedipus Rex, the riddle solver who
> solves the riddle.
> 
I did say the inquiries never reach their goal, that is, solve the
riddle. Oedipus thinks he knows that the fetish Freud describes stands
in for, yes, REpresents that which has been lost. Oedipa knows there is
no signified but only more signifiers to deny her ownership.

There is no final word, of course, something the Pynchon-reader does
well to bear in mind.