Snappycrossdresser

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 2004-10-16 at 09:19, Otto wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 15:56, Otto wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Would anyone care to state
> > >
> > > yes
> > >
> > > >in a few concise preferably grammatical
> > > > sentences
> > >
> > > no
> > >
> > > >what makes Pynchon po-mo?
> > > >
> > > > Just wondered.
> > > >
> > >
> > > the reversal of cause and effect
> > Roger sez he's not quite ready to give up on cause and effect.
> >
> > There's also the rocket striking before it's heard.
> >
> > These are possibly nods to Derrida's cause and effect deconstruction.
> > But let's face it. The reversal of cause and effect is nothing in
> > itself. If it has any importance at all, it would be some implication
> > about the use of language to produce fixed truth.
> >
> 
> But that's exactly the point. The possibility of producing a fixed truth by
> language is rather limited because of it's binary structure of significant
> and significate, because of the différance.

If one has faith in, and is convinced by, Derridean methodology, every
binary opposition can be deconstructed including
deconstruction/logocentrism.  One example is not better than any other
in demonstrating language breakdown or apparent breakdown. Mention of
possible cause and effect reversal in GR is not in itself, as I recall
anyway, a deconstruction. It's part of a rather fantastic tale.	 But
even if the c and e thing were deconstruction, I would still prefer you
showed how the effects of language breakdown appear in the book.  Being
able to do so might more definitively throw Pynchon into the po-mo camp.
That's what I think you should try to do to bolster your claim that GR,
say, is a postmodern novel. I have faith in you to make a better case.
 
> 
> >
> >
> > >
> > > binary oppositions, unity of opposites, entropy, chaos, indeterminacy
> > >
> > There's a big OVERdeterminancy. With the location of Slothrup's  sex
> > conquests determining where the V-2s come down. Or is that just
> > prediction?
> >
> 
> That's a violation of the laws of statistics.

What law of statistics is that? It's a case of determinacy, I'd say,
though of course a fanciful one.
> 
> > > Pilgrim's progress and pentecost postmodern (no salvation, no
> revelation)
> >
> > But there were angels appearing to the dying.
> >
> 
> If those people were dying how could they tell? You may believe in angels, I
> don't.

Not a question of what I believe in but what turns up in the book. The
appearance of the supernatural in P is part of what might make him a
pomo writer. You seemed to imply the reverse.


> 
> >Angels are beings that reveal things.
> 
> "Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the angelic orders?
> And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart,
> I would fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
> For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of Terror
> that we're still just able to bear, and why we adore it
> is because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
> Every angel is terrifying."
> (Rilke)
> 
> > >
> > > re-writing of official history
> >
> > Yes, but should the rewritings always be paranoias? This would give
> > revisionist history a bad name.
> >
> 
> What's paranoid about Charles Mason & Jeremiah Dixon having a good smoke
> with George Washington, making fun of the "historical truth" that Washington
> grew hemp *and* making fun of the hippie-assertion* that he smoked it?
> 
OK, that's pretty unparanoid.

> *in R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus"
> 
> I think it's more important to question first everything that is presented
> to us as a historical truth. Don't want to point to WMD's here & now but
> it's the most recent example. If I were a feudal Arab ruler I would develop
> paranoia.

I don't think the Bush version of the WMD thing will ever get accepted
either by conventional or revisionist historians. Anyway we're talking
about P novels.
> 
> > That World War II was just a shuffling of markets, the killing of so
> > many people merely a distraction, a sideshow for innocents, providing
> > vivid material for schoolbooks.
> >
> 
> Yes, that's what he says about it.

Do you think that's really what WWII was mainly about.


> 
> >
> > > self-reflexive writing
> > This may be the most po-mo thing he has going for him, even though
> > self-reflexivity isn't anything that just appeared in po-mo times.
> >
> 
> That's correct, "Tristram Shandy" written today would be considered
> postmodern:
> 
> "(...) the application of a (...) deconstructive skepticism to themselves
> especially distinguishes the fictions of Gaddis and Pynchon as postmodern.
> These reflexive or self-reflecting texts incorporate metacommentary on the
> processes of literary imagination and composition which shape them, in the
> manner of Sternes's "Tristram Shandy" or the Spanish picaresque novel."
> (Robert Jackson, "Intertextualism: The Case of Pynchon and Patrick White,"
> PN 46-49, p. 61)
> 
> > I'm not saying you're wrong, Otto, but I think you need more
> > clarification.
> >
> 
> Oh Paul, I've tried that so often in the last five years. And Rob is much
> better in this than I am as his essay in the last Pynchon Notes and his
> numerous posts on this list prove.

Rob's stuff is no doubt worthy but I would like to hear what YOU have to
say.
> 
> Mr. Derrida said: "It is impossible to respond. I can only do something
> which will leave me unsatisfied."
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/10derrida.html
> 
> Otto
>