Down these mean streets ...

[David Morris]

--- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> David Morris asks a reasonable question:
>
> > --- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:\
> > > Signifiers sliding all over the place.
> > 
> > Please, Paul, can you stop using this jargon and sink to a less "precise"
language, somewhere near to common parlance?  If it's any good it should not be
only for the refined.  How remote do you wish your audience to be?  This jargon
has always seemed to me to be a shield. Please make it not so.
> 
[...] 
> Hence the rhetorical devices you employ are designed to put me on the
defensive. 

How astute.
 
> Scare-quotes [...] are used to surround one word, "precise"; this is because
you don't really mean 'precise', you're not suggesting that I write clearly,
you mean the opposite, insofar as 'precise' terminology can be said to
obfuscate.

Well, duh.  I don't think this was any secret.

> 
> But you are polite, for which I'm grateful; and the question itself, since it
is asked so frequently, is one that must trouble many people. For that reason I
do take it seriously. I might easily blame the education system.

An easy scapegoat.

[...] 
> Only you can explain why you're prepared to invest time in reading (and one
imagines, understanding, insofar as any of us do) P's novels; but won't make
the effort to understand "signifiers sliding all over the place".

I know, generally, what it means, but don't find much value in knowing it, and
find no need for it in reading and understanding Pynchon's works.  And I
surmise that the answer to my question is "No."

David Morris

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