What Pynchon wrote?

[Paul Nightingale]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Terrance
> Sent: 27 May 2003 12:40
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: What Pynchon wrote?
> 
> 
> 
> Paul Nightingale wrote:
> >
> > Phase 2 (ix-xv) describes "Orwell's intention" in writing the novel
as a
> > response to current events, hence the relationship between text and
> > context. P again sets up oppositions: real/phony antifascism,
> > dissident/Official Left, a "critique" of what passed for socialism
under
> > the post-45 Labour Govt (opposed to an earlier "honourable
struggle").
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why does P set up these oppositions?
> 

The oppositions here simply continue the textual strategy introduced in
phase 1. "Orwell's intentions" should alert us to the way in which O
responded consciously to current events/circumstances, I think (which is
why earlier I said the quotation on top of viii referred to
"aspirations" ... a vague idea of what he wanted to do).

"Orwell's intentions" follows on from, and is offered as an alternative
to, the way the novel was marketed/read. Quite specifically, then, P is
making a connection between text and author's response to history. If
the book's reception in the US has to be explained by anticommunist
hysteria, then one alternative is to read it in terms of its author's
intentions. Either way, the text becomes quite fluid, its meaning shifts
in accordance with the way it's read (and here I think O-as-author is
just another reader of his own work, he writes and then considers as a
reader).


> As others have noted, his attempt to (construct oppositions?) situate
> Orwell around the term "fascism" is problematic.

Perhaps we need to separate P's writing from the assumptions that we as
readers bring to those terms independently of the text.