Pynchon and fascism

[Malignd]

<<Part of this approach is that one questions the
distinctions usually drawn between different kinds or
genres of writing. Most obviously fact/fiction: I
treat the Foreword as fiction. ...  Think of DeLillo's
Libra, also Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand,
several of Doctorow's novels ... and M&D. P has been
dealing with the fictions of history writing --
"stencilised history", pastiche, the unreliable
narrator -- since his first stories, and this is how I
approach the Foreword. One looks at how rather than
what, bearing in mind that how produces what.>>

I may be jumping in late and missing things already
covered, but it's difficult for me to see any way in
which clarity is gained by treating the Foreword as
fiction.  And I certainly find nothing persuasive in
your comparing it to Libra or Doctorow or James
Ellroy.

Other than the "all history is fiction" argument,
which is tedious and unrewarding, I can't see any
basis this approach.

<<Another key point is that the only way in which we
can know fascism is through what's written about it,
the way it's represented ...  The real world is out
there somewhere; we can only know it through the way
it's represented, the text as mediator.>>

Really.  I think there are any number of illiterates
who might give a fair description of fascism who
"know" fascism in rather more direct ways.







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