Derrida and Pynchon

[jbor]

>> [...] The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant
>> whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid
>> for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening
>> about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns
>> probe ancient foetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in
>> the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the
>> word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor
>> then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were:
>> inside, safe, or outside, lost. (Lot 49, p. 89)

on 15/10/04 2:20 AM, Ghetta Life wrote:
 
> A very nice quotation. It reminds me why I like Pynchon so much:  His
> writing is often just beautiful, poetic.   It's been a long time since I've
> read COL49.  I remember it as my least favorite Pynchon novel (well, 2nd
> least - Least would be Vineland), though I know some feel it's great.  Why
> is it that it's never been suggested for a group-read on the P-list?  At
> least not in my memory...

I think we did do a group read, back in mid-2001. But blink and you'd have
missed it. Lot 49 was the novel of Pynchon's that used to be prescribed on
undergraduate literature syllabuses for classes on the Contemporary American
Novel, Postmodern Fiction and so on. Because of its length. I guess
Pynchon's negative remarks about it in the Slow Learner 'Intro' caused a few
course organisers to rethink their text selections, which meant that V., GR,
and even Vineland started to appear in its stead. Which wasn't a bad thing.

I agree that Pynchon's prose is often poetic. As well, Lot 49 is compact (as
opposed to the sprawling quality of his other major works) and very very
funny. Also impressive is the way in which ideas from different intellectual
disciplines are interwoven -- satirically for the most part, though there is
intellectual weight there as well. For its time it's also cutting edge in
terms of its literary form.

Just noticing the subject line again, it occurs to me that Derrida's seminal
1966 essay/lecture 'Structure, Sign and Play' would make the ideal companion
text to Pynchon's Lot 49:

[...]
There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign,
of freeplay. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering, a truth or an
origin which is free from freeplay and from the order of the sign, and lives
like an exile the necessity of interpretation. The other, which is no longer
turned toward the origin, affirms freeplay and tries to pass beyond man and
humanism, the name man being the name of that being who, throughout the
history of metaphysics or of ontotheology -- in other words, through the
history of all of his history -- has dreamed of full presence, the
reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of the game. [...]

http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/derr.htm

best