Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

on 31/5/03 3:00 AM, Paul Nightingale wrote:

> I don't prescribe anything. Insofar as I offer a starting-point for
> discussion, then clearly one could see that as an attempt to dictate the
> way the discussion proceeds. But then, if you write anything, anyone
> responding will have to start there. I think the question is, how far
> the framework I offer limits the range of responses possible.

I won't labour the issue, because we seem to have gotten to a point where
we're calling what the other person is doing "interpretation", as though
that's a bad thing, and claiming "analysis" for our own response, as though
that's a more legitimate approach to the text. I think that that is a false
opposition, as I've said. I don't think that the overlay of "closed" and
"open" readings applies to the binary, or "Ideal", opposition, as you would
have it. One can offer an interpretation of "what the text means" in an
"open" way, which has more to do with the manner in which the response is
framed and the tenor of the discussion which ensues, and one can provide an
analytical framework of "how the text works" in a "closed" way, by denying
the possibility that there are alternative approaches (which isn't what you
are doing, but it's certainly a problem which is inherent to readers working
from within strict guidelines set down by critical "movements" and
"experts"). What I did in my summary of the text within which the "fascism"
references are located was to avoid "interpretation", as you described it,
and to provide an "analysis" of "how the text works". I actually think there
is far less commentary on "what the text means" in my summary than there was
in yours.

In relation to the above paragraphy, your framework is not the "start", or
not necessarily, and it's certainly not the only possible (or "correct")
framework or starting-point for responding to the text. Pynchon's text
itself is the "start", its language, its structures, its content; in another
sense Orwell's novel, or his life, are the "start"; and in yet another sense
the conventions of a literary Foreword are the "start". And, for some
readers, the historical/political situation (then/now/in the future) is the
"start". Any of those will also provide an analytical framework for
approaching and exploring the text, and there are no doubt more, such as
what other critics and readers have written or said about the novel, or
about Pynchon, or Pynchon's own fiction and non-fiction back catalogue.
Furthermore, each of these "starts" is internally significant to the
Foreword; Pynchon refers to or employs all of them overtly, from the
announcement of his authorship and the title given to the text, to explicit
cues within the text itself.

Selecting some things and not others from the text as "significant" and then
setting them against one another is an act of interpretation, call it what
you will. But, as I've said, it's not a bad thing. It's what all of us do
when we read. Thanks again.

best