Pynchon and fascism

[Michael Joseph]

On Sat, 31 May 2003, Terrance wrote:
> Right. I understand what Paul is writing. Do you understand what I'm
> writing?
>
> It doesn't. It hasn't. It's good question. Give it some thought.
>
Terence, I think that in assuming the basic tenets of your position are
correct and that non-agreement signals non-apprehension you are tending to
seem rather fideistic. Your dog metaphor insists that we need to
categorize Introduction as a *kind* of fiction, that we do genre analysis,
even though that is not the way narrative analysis usually works, and that
is not what Paul N. seems to be up to. Check out his paratextual analysis
of Introduction, which your response sliced away.  That sort of analysis
is enabled by the critical position your questions appear to challenge as
insufficient because it does not advance understanding. Again, I thought
your speculative hypothesis that Introduction is pomo fiction a good idea
and potentially fruitful, not least of all because it finessed your own
insistence upon limiting competing frames of analysis. I would discourage
Paul from rejecting pomo fiction as a useful frame--but, of course, as
you've so bluntly declared, I may not be understanding his texts,
either--because I don't see post modernism as merely problematizing
boundaries, but as problematizing the validity of boundaries, of
conceptualizing conventional historical criticism, the kind of
genre-fication you are gavelling us to order to provide. In a sense,
Terence, to go along with your funny analogy, declaring Introduction to be
a kind of dog is a kind of retournement, and therefore to ask what kind of
a dog, is a kind of disorder--along the lines of the guy who tells the
shrink he won't discourage his brother from imagining he's a chicken
because the family needs the eggs.



M<ichael