Pynchon and fascism

[Paul Mackin]

I dropped out of this thread because I couldn't think of anything more
to say. But that was before "analysis" was introduced. In my experience
when someone uses this word there is invariably an adjective
accompanying it, either stated of implied 

Mathematical analysis
Chemical analysis
Business analysis
Marxist analysis
Psycho-analysis
Radical feminist analysis
Gay and Lesbian analysis
Textual analysis

So my question is, what kind of analysis is being discussed below?

Give me an adjective. 

P.



On Fri, 2003-05-30 at 20:15, jbor wrote:
> 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
>