Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

>> 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.

on 6/6/03 2:24 AM, Malignd wrote:

> This is true, but I think it states things in a
> confused order that perpetuates the blurring of
> fiction with non-fiction or the idea that all writing
> is fiction (or whatever).  It's not so much the case
> that other sorts of prose contain "traditional
> fictional components"; rather that all types of prose
> makes use of these components, fiction one among them.

The larger point, however, is that certain types of text lay claim to
"truth", and that this claim is often accepted by virtue of their
categorisation (as scientific treatise, "factual" news report, history etc)
rather than by any internally or externally-quantifiable condition. The
Realist novelists picked up on this, more as a commercial strategy than
anything else, and so wrote fictions which would "mirror" what life was like
in order that readers would arrive at a "willing suspension of disbelief".
When one reads a history text on a particular subject she or he experiences
the same sort of thing, even though the history book on the same subject
next to it on the library shelf paints a completely opposite picture and, if
chosen instead, would have produced exactly the same effect on the reader.

We "believe" a history of colonial America in a way that we don't ever
"believe" _Mason & Dixon_. The manner (and mode) in which Pynchon has
written the novel consciously draws attention to this (which is sort of what
the quote about "foregrounding representation" was trying to say). With the
amount of research which went into the novel, Pynchon could easily have
written a "straight" history, and on that basis he would qualify as an
expert on the subject. But there is a larger point about textual
representation which he is making through the medium he has chosen. (Having
said that, I agree with Dugdale that his fiction is a lot of fun, too.)

I guess the bottom line is that fiction and non-fiction aren't apples and
oranges. All are text, and all text is representation.

best