Why Hawaii?

[Michael Joseph]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Terrance wrote:

> Michael Joseph wrote:
> >
> > Seems to me the hawaii scene is credible and meaningful for reasons noted,
> > but none yet offered explains why it must be.
>
> Credible? Why does it need to be credible?

THE DEVIL'S ADVICE TO STORY-TELLERS
RGraves

Lest men suspect your tale to be unture,
Keep probability -- some say -- i view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross of probabilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or loce.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do --
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scrps
That may shake down into a world perhaps;
Peopel this world, by chance created so,
With random persons whom you do not know ==
The teashop sort, or travellers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise
Their own and y our own and your readers' eyes;
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair)
Motive and end adn moral in teh air;
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.

This is a Pynchon novel. It
> ain't credible. Moreover, it ain't meaningful. What does it mean? What's
> meaningful about it?
>
Lot of stuff. In the meditation upon whether history governs or
imagination trumps history, for example. Take Zoyd's masturbatory fantasy
for example (handjobs, self-administered or otherwise being one of the
novel's minor topoi). In Zoyd's fantasy, imagination governs. The
separation berween Frenesi adn Zoyd disappears. He "registers it all."
However, he wakes up to discover Frenesi has left the hotel. He breakdsd
down crying. History (as what actually happens) trumps imagination.
Pynchon then moves away from history (as realistic story-telling) by
treating the aftermath of Frenesi's departure imaginatively, in the
suicide fantasy. Is Pynchon coping with loss or is the suicide fantasy a
failure of nerve? Perhaps he is commenting upon the need for fantasy as an
escape from the terrors of history (personal or otherwise) here, and
perhaps Zoy'd comment to theassistant manager are meant for us:

"'Fantasy!' Zoyd was sniffling again. 'Who said anythin' about
make-believe, dude? Don't you think I'm serious about this?'"

I think there is a sense in which he is contemplating art and then
comparing it to religion in his Jack Lord reference. Art as fantasy makes
loss bearable because, like religion, it offers the devotee a sense that
something *really* exists, and that immutable values can be inferred from
it. This is absurd, from a rational point of view--but its absurdity only
negates its effectiveness for those who take a rational point of view. I
think these questions are meaningful, though they may not resonate with
others, some of whom may be prone to see Pynchon as a nihilist or who
cannot allow any view of imaginative literature to have a non-historicist
scope.

>  But if there is a quality of
> > whimsy to it, it is a quality that sort of wafts through fiction.  May as
> > well ask 'Why Otto?' How dreary otherwise.
>
> It might be a bit more entertaining if we could figure out some of the
> dialogue, but I suspect that's a futile exercise. This episode should
> have stayed on the cutting room floor.
>
Assuming it had been on the cutting room floor.


Michael