Pynchon and fascism

[Paul Nightingale]

Malignd wrote:
 
> <<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.

Well yes. And I might be mistaken in taking you seriously here, but I
think if you unedit my text you might be prepared to agree that I
haven't written what you try (a tad clumsily, I might add) to say I did
write.

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

Again a distortion of what I wrote. I'm not sure I see a basis in your
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.
> 

Again a one-dimensional put-down that rests on your refusal to read and
comment on what I've written.

All in all, quite an impressive response.