98% Pynchon Free

[Michael Joseph]

Otto, thank you for posting this explanation (and for forsaking your
crusade against the Roches!)

It always seemed to me that Red Wheelbarrow does not ascribe importance to
a thing but to a horizon of possibilities; it captures Williams sort of
noodling around, about to make a categorical judgment about *something*
and then in comes the man from Porlock in the form of the material world
to bowl him over.  His mind wanders at his own lecture. As you say, the
expectations aren't fulfilled by the second line, and "consistency"
dissipates. Yet, the structure of the poem relates the question to what
follows. I think the question you pose "what to make of that?" becomes the
poem's core question. The mind's attempt to impose coherence here, or, the
poststructuralist's idea of "freeplay," becomes one possible candidate for
the thing so much depends on. Though, of course, as Terence points out and
emphasizes with Williams' famous sweet plum poem, there are other possible
candidates--the stuff by which one is distracted, "the things of this
world,"  everyday life, the 'hermeneutic deposit,' or the senses through
which the world flows into us and by which we as readers are free to
ground our own declarations of what is really important. Of course, one
might also consider that "so much depends on" the tension between the
essential human trait of striving to impose coherence upon the world (to
see the world as codes of signification for something beyond itself) and
the engulfing world--the existential situation symbolized by the tool and
its potentialities to cultivate the land and to cultivate the mind.



Michael




> My idea is that the first line builds up a tension, raises expectations
of something really important. But these expectations aren't fulfilled by
the second line. A wheel barrow isn't that important, even if it glazes
from rain water. And chickens, oh je, what to make of that? Definitely the
red wheel-barrow, the rain water and the white chickens are those
contradictory clues that resist any consistency Perloff means.


> >
> > William Carlos Williams:
> >
> > so much depends
> > upon
> > a red wheel
> > barrow
> > glazed with rain
> > water
> > beside the white
> > chickens.
> >
>
> My idea is that the first line builds up a tension, raises expectations of
> something really important. But these expectations aren't fulfilled by the
> second line. A wheel barrow isn't that important, even if it glazes from
> rain water. And chickens, oh je, what to make of that? Definitely the red
> wheel-barrow, the rain water and the white chickens are those contradictory
> clues that resist any consistency Perloff means.