What Pynchon wrote?

[Paul Nightingale]

Terrance wrote:
> 
> Most of what Paul wrote can't stand up to a stiff wind.

And macho posturing aside, why would anyone or -thing want to?

Anyway...

> 
> {{{{Phase 1 (vii-ix) introduces Orwell and the novel itself. P raises
> the
> question of identity through constructing a series of oppositions.
Blair
> becomes Orwell as he moves away from his comfortable family/social
> background, a journey completed on the final page.}}}}
> 
To which Terrance replies:

> P does not raise the identity question.

I'm afraid he does, although if you wish I'll be more precise: P's
writing, the text, raises the identity question.

The opening paragraph juxtaposes 'Blair' to 'Orwell'. You yourself have
insisted, several times, on referring to the author as 'Blair';
presumably you have a reason for that. Such name changes are not
uncommon, of course, for writers and celebrities of one kind or another.
Nonetheless, there is a gap between nom-de-plume and family-name. For O
himself it might have been symbolic, given his move away from the
circumstances of his upbringing. O-as-author also signifies the texts
that bear his name, as well as the man himself.

Someone (I forget who) said that P's opening paragraph was pretty much
what you could have found on Google. That is to say, the information
given is pretty banal. Undistinguished, even. Not 'pynchonised', ie
turned into 'great literature'. Well OK. It doesn't compare to the
opening paragraph of M&D. But one must assume that P made a decision
about every word. Furthermore, the banality argument, which has been
trotted out frequently, betrays a refusal to consider the text as
writing. It also betrays a refusal to consider a given section in
context.

Hence, one must look at this paragraph in the context of the Foreword as
a whole. The most banal piece of writing (which I believe this isn't)
involves selection and is therefore significant.

>  What series of oppositions?

In the first instance, Blair/Orwell. Also 'past'/'present' in the ref to
opium production: this alerts the reader to different ways of reading
history in the light of 'the present'. Also "may have been suggested" at
the end of the para: this brings up another key aspect of
history-writing, which questions the knowability of the past. All of
that in the first para, oppositions both explicit and implicit (so I
know what I'm letting myself in for there).

You might still wish to say this is banal writing, and the points I
raise are banal because no more than Googled.

Well OK, we'll come back to that.

Continue with the section following, where P introduces the novel. He
doesn't have to do it quite like this, so the most hostile reader must
accept that P has composed (rather than googled) this section. But what
he highlights are (a) the opposition between imagination/desire and what
is subsequently produced (in "every book is a failure"). Then (b) the
mismatch between the novel and its marketing, its characters and their
(alleged) real-life models ...

> 
> 
> {{{{Neither is the novel
> quite what it seems ("a sort of anti-Communist tract"): BB and
Goldstein
> "do not line quite line up with their models" etc.}}}}
> 
> The issue P raises is not whether or not _1984_ is what it seems to
be,
> but what Orwell's intentions were and how the book was read in the US
by
> anti-Communist ideologues. The lining up of models goes to P's
> contrasting  Animal Farm with _1984_

Nowhere here, in what I called phase 1, does P discuss O's intentions
(as opposed to his aspirations, top of viii). So you're mistaken there.
Moreover, in the para beginning "In a way ..." (viii) he is quite
clearly discussing gaps between novel/reception and characters/models.
Here and in the "Korean conflict" para, there is not a single mention of
O, let alone his intentions. Is it implicit? Well, you tell me.

And P's ref to AF is part of his discussion of 1984's reception. The
point is, he draws attention to the mismatch; this is part of his
construction of the novel and its relationship to context. Hence ...

In short, the key opposition here is between text and context, where
context includes both the circumstances of its writing and the
circumstances of its reading. That the latter might change is, of
course, discussed subsequently.

Now, if one goes back and considers the opening para (on vii) as part of
this first phase (up to "Orwell's intention" on ix) one might be
inclined to recognise consistency in P's writing and, consequently,
revise the banality-tag.

By consistency I mean the tension between text/writing and what it
refers to, between signifier and signified. This is what I have meant
before when saying the Pynchon-text asks us to consider how we know what
we know. If we don't have to ask those questions, there is no gap
between signifier and signified. The identity question begins with
Blair/Orwell and ends with the status of the text, be it specifically
1984 or just any text ... including, as I go on to argue, the
Pynchon-text one is currently reading.