Pynchon and fascism

[Vincent A. Maeder]

Well--and this dips into a whole philosophical realm that will lead us
down dark hallways as we bump into each other--each reader's POV screws
with the intent of the author's POV distancing the reader from the
authorial intent.  Fine.  But what of the craft of writing?  If a
coherent POV is created by an author, what has he done in the craft of
writing that resulted in your perception of a coherent POV?  What use of
grammar, devises, rhetoric, argument, assonance, consonance,
alliteration, meter, language, rhythm, repetition, et al., caused your
perception of a coherent POV?  In other words, rather than defining what
the POV is, define what in the text developed your perceived POV
(whatever that might be). 

All this shit is ultimately fragile mind-sucking mental masturbatory
practice as there are too many philosophical approaches to this buggery.
My goal was to develop a discussion of the artistic process rather than
the cerebral numbing discussion of fiction vs fact, interpretation vs
analysis, and so on (not that I don't immensely enjoy those
discussions--it just seems they dominate the list).  What the list is
doing, which is fine but is not helpful on the front-end of the artist's
process, is looking at the effects of the writing rather than the actual
elements that contribute to that effect (although there is always an
echo of that type of discussion at times).

Some would say that it is impossible to get in the mind of the author
and therefore it is necessary that we look at the effects, or construct
the prose out of its references, or deconstruct it away from reality.
This is interesting mental gymnastics and is informative as to how an
author might go around screwing with the mental maps of readers, but
doesn't necessarily give us insight on the artist and his process.  

So, my question is not what is the Author saying, rather what did he
write that caused you to have that emotional and psychological response?
What makes this writing resonate with you?  What coheres the POV for
you?  What breaks the POV for you?  Does that break in POV change the
emotional and psychological reaction?  In what manner?  Does this
progress the story?  Is the piece effectively bringing about a coherent
POV?  An understandable plot?  A consistent character?  And so on,
leaving issues of did the author intend to echo Wittgenstein's
perception of language as a response to and reproduction of reality...

This, all, in application to the Foreward, SL, GR, COL49, VL, MD, and V.

V.

-----Original Message-----
From: 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.)<