Pynchon and fascism

[Michael Joseph]

> > > >
> > > > Again, What kind of fiction is the Foreword?
> the boundary of fact and fiction may be collapsed or suspended, but
> because it's a useful question to ask if we want to analyze what Pynchon
> wrote.  What kind of fiction is the Foreword? Paul N. says it's not the
> same as M&D, but he goes on to compare Churchill as character with
> Washington as character. Is the Foreword postmodernist fiction? What?
>

Figuring this out is part of the task of interpretation, and not part of
an interpretive schematic. But since one needs a provisional hypothesis, I
think postmodernist fiction is an excellent choice, particularly for you,
Terence, I suspect, since you suggested it.

I think Paul is asking us to read Introduction within a fictional context,
not primarily to categorize it as a kind of fiction. So, for example, Ann
Fabian has analyzed the requests of Union soldiers for government
assistance after the War, and found they appropriate the language of slave
narratives, that white veterans of the war describe themselves in ways
developed in the autobiographical texts of slaves and exslaves. There is
another critic (name forgotten) who works on A.A. narratives. By shearing
off this whole practical dimension, these kinds of analyses attempt to
study the literariness of these homely, vernacular narratives.

Many of us do this all the time, and, in fact, haven't many folks on this
list, I'm thinking of Malignd, Pynchonoid, The Great Quail, chosen names
that deliberately imply at some level they are characters within a fictive
world governed by a belief in the archetypal insights of Thomas Pynchon,
and that list discussion constitutes some kind of an improvised
participatory fiction that emulates intrinsic values within the exemplary
fiction of Thomas Pynchon? One could actually analyze list discussion
within a fictional context, although we are not explicitly writing
fiction. I guess I'm wondering why you think a consideration of the
Introduction in a fictional context should wait until kind of fiction can
be conclusively determined or that Paul N. needs to even have a kind of
fiction in mind.



Michael