Derrida and Pynchon (good quote)

[Joseph Tracy]

Not familiar with Derrida, but I enjoyed this artfully composed meditation
on the spectrum of modernist responses to the question of identity
/meaning. Thanks.

> [Original Message]
> From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: 10/12/2004 1:57:59 PM
> Subject: Derrida and Pynchon
>
> 'Emptiness and plentitude in "Bartleby the Scrivener"
> and The Crying of Lot 49'
> Hans, James S. Essays in Literature. Macomb: Fall 1995.
> Vol.22, Iss. 2;  pg. 285, 17 pgs
>
> [...]
> In the thematic context, perhaps no modern topic has been given more
> consideration than the way in which we are thought to create our own
selves,
> or to put it another way, the way in which we are ourselves finally
> arbitrary signs to be filled up by whatever haunts us at the moment. If
the
> moderns called language and form into question, if they seriously
considered
> the degree to which all utterance is devoid of ground, they also pursued
the
> ways in which the same thing could be said of our conceptions of
individual
> humans. Indeed, one of the great early modern texts, "Bartleby, the
> Scrivener," has as its main character one of the first creations to
> represent a sort of nothing, a void of a human who is not just a surd in
the
> end but highly meaningful precisely because the echoes of his alienation
and
> meaninglessness in the modern era are to be found in the employer, the
> reader, and anyone else who takes up space in the world we presently live
> in. The companion text to "Bartleby," I would argue, the one that marks
the
> end of this modern thematic, is Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, a
> work in which it is not the void at the center of humans that is at issue
> but rather the great plenitude. Both works focus on the same questions-the
> problem of identity in the modern world, the question of the reality of
our
> identity, the related concerns of alienation and despair--but "Bartleby"
> marks these problems in terms of lack whereas Lot 49 construes them in
terms
> of the horrifying plenitude of meaning. Just as Derrida was to demonstrate
> that the supplementary character of language meant both that language
never
> says enough and that it always says too much--that the problem was as
much a
> plenitude of meanings as a lack of them--so too Pynchon shows that the
> problem is not that we are confronted by our own meaninglessness but
rather
> that we are forced to deal with the fact that we have too many meanings,
> that we are far too rich in our plenitude to be contemplated in any
bearable
> manner.
> [...]
>
> best
>