copacetic susidiary

[Michael Joseph]

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Terrance wrote:

> A wholly-owned subsidiary is a subsidiary which is owned entirely by its
> holding company.  The suggestion that Ralph's family business is a front
> company for the Catholic Church is not supported by the text.
>
I wonder if the Church can be as easily dismissed as you suggest, T.

> Again, not picking on V. here, but what's in the text is being ignored.

V.? Speaking of close reading! V's doing the Pale Fire commentary this
week. I'm the guy you're not picking on!

> Pynchon's text is entirely irrelevant to most of these critical readings
> of ... other texts. I mean, I really like Eddins, but how the hell can
> he write a a 400 page book on Pynchon's four novels and not get the
> names of characters straight? How in the world can a critic sit down and
> write an entire book (nearly 600 pages) on one novel (GR) and not get
> the family trees right. [...]

Okay, point taken. But here's how this happens. Pynchon is not Dickens.
Pynchon is working in abstractions, and abstracting from abstractions.
It's impossible and even perhaps unforgivable for a reader not to get lost
following the rising and crossing currents of thought in a Pynchon text,
and ideally in one's own rising responses. Of course, getting names,
family trees, right matters, and ought to be sorted out before
publication. These are errors, but they are not inexplicable, nor are they
mortal.



Michael