Pynchon and fascism

[Paul Nightingale]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of jbor
> Sent: 29 May 2003 23:51
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: Pynchon and fascism
> 
> on 29/5/03 4:43 PM, Paul Nightingale at isread at btopenworld.com wrote:
> 
> > but they are
> > questions of interpretation; what I'm trying to do is discuss ways
of
> > analysing the text, to my mind an important distinction.
> 
> I'm interested in this distinction. In my experience, one analyses a
text
> in
> order to interpret it. The two activities can't be separated like
this.
> Together, they constitute the reading process.

I think I would have to agree that the distinction is a difficult one.
However, 'interpretation' refers to 'understanding what the text means'
or 'explaining what it means'. Hence, one decodes the text. In Freudian
terms, the latent meaning gives way to the manifest content through the
efforts of the reader. Meaning is 'disguised' by the text, or somehow
'in' the text, and has to be 'brought to the surface'. Hence, there is a
separation of the text from whatever we decide its meaning is. The text
has become a vehicle for the message, from which we might infer that the
same message could choose another vehicle (go by train rather than bus).
Furthermore, this is where the reader becomes some kind of expert, able
to 'see' what others can't. Someone like Leavis, for example, really did
seem to believe that some readers ("a minority") were superior in that
sense, capable of "genuine personal response". It does sadden me that
most English teaching in this country is no more than watered-down
Leavisism after almost a century, but that's another story.

Anyway ... the message of M&D is, don't leave home with Quakers. No it
isn't, yes it is ... rival critics will then offer quotations to support
their views, and so on. I have said more than once that P doesn't offer
messages; I suppose, to be more accurate, I should say I don't go
looking for them, I don't decode texts in that way. But still, I don't
think he offers messages; no decoding, in my view, can bring out the
statement, P equates 1984 to the present-day US (or: don't leave home
with Quakers). What is especially interesting about his writing, to me,
is that the denial of that kind of reading is built into it. He writes
in such a way as to defy interpretation of the conventional
message-seeking (Leavisite?) kind.

Analysis on the other hand exposes the way the text works, a different
kind of reading. The difficulty arises if you say this is still a form
of decoding, an exposure of meaning. I would now say that the way the
text works is the text, is its meaning (and later on one should include
the reader/act of reading as part of the text). In that sense, there is
nothing hiding behind the manifest content.

I said the opening para of the Foreword juxtaposes 'Blair' to 'Orwell',
which raises the question of identity. Has my analysis (of the way the
text works, or sets up oppositions) been followed by an interpretation
of what it means? I've certainly concluded something about the way P has
composed the paragraph, but does this amount to saying I know what it
means? Have I offered a reading that separates meaning/message from
text? To my mind, 'raises the question of identity' addresses the way
the text is organised around such juxtapositions ... and I've attempted
to show how subsequent paragraphs work in the same way. This is how I
read anything, looking for A juxtaposed to B.

My discussion of fascist/fascism drew attention to different usages of
the term(s) in different contexts. Is this to interpret P as saying, the
word's meaning cannot be pinned down, it depends on context ... which
then becomes the message. I think this is where those who don't like the
messages they've gone looking for dismiss the Foreword as banal/shitty
writing etc: P-as-author has 'let them down'. Which is another way of
saying, the text cannot support the author.

This is going on a bit, so I'll address the rest of your post
separately.