Pynchon and fascism

[Michael Joseph]

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Vincent A. Maeder wrote:

> . . . and a division (apparent only to me working amongst the deep
> lurkers here) that prose is somehow distinct from fiction for purposes
> of the artistic expression.  Not being literate in literary analysis, I
> can only approach this subject from the writer's point of view.  All
> writing contains a POV, and the goal of that writing is to create a
> coherent POV (while some will claim Pynchon is unable to maintain a
> specific POV, I would disagree arguing that his squirming into dream,
> hallucination, and so on creates the POV).  POV is also present in
> nonfiction or essayist literature as well.  For example, there is a
> difference in the POV of a work by Sartre versus Plato, yet they are
> both "prose".  In other words, simply because a piece is not fiction
> does not mean it cannot contain traditional fictional components of
> circumlocution, hyperbole, satire, deception and that ultimate POV, the
> unreliable narrator/POV, amongst others.


Vincent, Consider that stories often contain more than one first-person
narrator (Mason/Dixon for ex.) and that deciding which represents the
authorial voice is pretty tough. Even when we have a story like THE HUMAN
STAIN, in which one of the two "focalized" (i.e. first person narrator)
characters is identified with the author (Zuckerman/Roth), we cannot
automatically ascribe greater credibility to his judgments, and,
correspondingly, 'deprivilege' the judgments of the non-authorial
narrator, Coleman Silk. In view of the fact that Coleman Silk (who, as
well as being one of the focalized characters, is also the book's
protagonist), is identified as an 'asynchronous' character (that is, our
understanding of who he is experiences a vivid split over the course of
the book), the issue of reliability crashes through the glossiness of
Zuckerman/Roth's authorativeness. We are left with a sense of uncertainty,
and some would argue, persuasively I think, that it is this uncertainty
that enables us to review our own reading strategies, and thence the whole
apparatus by which we negotiate reality. (For a diminishing band of
diehards, this kind of introspection constitutes navel-gazing--an infinite
regress in which what one is trying to define eludes definition and leads
one away from What the Author is Saying. Oh, well.)


Michael