"the veracity of Pynchon's account"

[Otto]

"the veracity of Pynchon's account"

> The problem with history is it pretends to be true.  Sometimes it is.
> So which is the correct history, the true account?  For a most recent
> example: the Swiftboat Veterans or John Kerry?

I agree, the most recent novel of historical metafiction I've read was
Eco's "Baudolino" where the "true" story of Friedrich I. Barbarossa's
(»Redbeard«) death is being told. The whole thing about History is that it
is being questioned and challenged by postmodernism -- like "Truth" and
"God" too.

> Did Truman drop the atom bombs to save millions of lives, or because
> the Japanese were about to surrender to the Russians?  The Kennedy
> assassination?

A very good example. The Warren-Report is mostly fiction, isn't it? The
one-killer theory. Seen the Zapruder-film only recently again on ARTE-TV:
http://www.arte-tv.com/de/638244.html
and it's quite obvious that the official version is an outright lie.

> I've read so many versions of Watergate that I still don't
> have a clue whether it was about the bestiality photos of a White House
> secretary or a 2nd 500,000 Howard Hughes loan or something else entirely.
> There are the cold hard facts, and then a story wove around them.
>

That's what we have the media for nowadays. As Pynchon says:

"Our nominally free news media are required to present "balanced" coverage,
in which every "truth" is immediately neutered by an equal and opposite one.
Every day public opinion is the target or rewritten history, official
amnesia and outright lying, all of which is benevolently termed "spin," as
if it were no more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know better
than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and doubt at the same
time--it seems a condition of political thought in a modern superstate to be
permanently of at least two minds on most issues. Needless to say, this is
of inestimable use to those in power who wish to remain there, preferably
forever." ("Foreword" to "1984," p. xiii)

> Fiction doesn't have to pretend, even when it is true.  That's what makes
> it of a higher order, even when it's bad.
>

I'm not sure about the higher order because a binary opposition of "fact vs
fiction" where normally "fact" would be the higher pole isn't deconstructed
just by reversing the poles. I think the way Pynchon deals with the facts in
"Mason & Dixon" is very skilled and extremely funny.

> Not sure why I'm responding to the post of a complete jerk, but this Jolly
> phuck could actually add something if he pulled up his pants and took the
> blunt out of his mouth, and put down the Goddamn baseball bat.  Too bad.
> His flames are a faulty Bic.
>
> Kent Mueller

Not sure about the "complete jerk" but if he'd spend more time on the
content of his messages and less on insults it would be surely better. I
suspect he's quite young.

>> "concern with the veracity of Pynchon´s account?"
>>
>>GR, as postmodernist Ur-text, and the cottage industry
>>it has spawned (as well as much of literary studies as a whole),
>>reveal, I assert, a sort of narcissistic, a-historical, anti-empirical
>>mode of perception, which, even if allegedly leftist ( i,e the
>>concern with the "preterite" and the occasional anarchist themes),
>>is a form of , yes, bourgeois hedonism, if not quasi-aristocratic
>>nihilism.

What's wrong about hedonism in a world that's doomed? Didn't you advise
someone to take LSD in one of your posts?

>>So that is a project I am working on.
>>Additionally, the incessant pynchonian zaniness of GR is an improper and,
>>indeed, disrespectful aesthetic response to an event of monumental tragic
>>proportions such as WWII.
>

Don't you think that an expression like "an event of monumental tragic
proportions such as WWII" doesn't say anything at all? You won't get an
understanding of that "event" if you only believe the official sources.

>>"Fiction and literature certainly have other things to offer besides
>>factual information (something any decent student of lit. th. knows,
>>so I don´t see why this knowledge would undercut the critical
>>enterprise)."
>>
>>Yeah, that's the party line, which anyone who has taken a few lit classes
>>learns to parrot.  I simply have grown to disagree with this priviledging
>>of literature over history, and over "factual" investigations, whether
>>economic or biological. I always enjoyed history classes more than the
>>rhetorical circle jerking of Eng-wish or American lit. anyways.  Lit.
>>types might tell you about Hamlet's crisis of indecision;  can they tell
you
>>about Oliver Cromwell or the sick phuck that was King James or
>>King Henry VIII? They can tell you about Melville's "whiteness of the
>>whale" , but can they discuss Jeffersonian rationalism, or Lincoln's
>>monetary reform or even the Civil War battles?

Try Gaddis' "A Frolic of His Own" on that if you still believe that the
Civil War was about freeing slaves.

>>And they can
>>discuss GR and Osbie, the "preterite",  and the
>>Zone and the White Visitation and  Pointsman, ad nauseam, but can they say
>>discuss the Beer Hall Putsch, or  purge of the Social Democrats such as
>>Kautsky?!  Some of them can surely.  But my point is that the lit. biz has
>>become--and I think this is over the last 50 years or so--this bizarre
>>pseudo-psychological field, and those "scholars" working in tthis field
>>are not required to verify or substantiate their ideas either inductively
>>(evidence, data) or deductively; of course neither are novelists.
>>Po-mo has, I think, just made the problem worse.

The problem of ICBM's ("our common nightmare") hasn't made worse by GR. "V"
has directed our look to earlier holocausts and how those responsible turned
out to be the ones who've led Germany into WWII, "Vineland" has shown us how
dangerously close American politics have come to fascism in the 80's. I
think this is all great literature concerned with what those in power
history does to us. One day there will be a postmodern novel about the
Bush-wars (Irak, and next maybe Iran).

Otto