"the veracity of Pynchon's account"

[Malignd]

<<Yes, it's banal, mundane and basic.  Yes there is a
history of actual facts, things that happened and are
known and can't be denied.  More and more so.  More
facts sooner, and more partisan versions that are
harder to verify.  But history is or has been always
selective, and now you can select your history.

Works like GR or Gaddis' Recognition's or JR
incorporate history in a way that is somehow signaled
"This is an obscure fact I have found, incorporated
within a fictional text, possibly worthy of research
on your own, dear reader, whether you are a PHD
candidate writing a thesis or a wing nut autodidact
sitting in a coffee house."  But you're right to say
GR is just a novel, a very good one (#3 in my all time
favorites), The paranoid conspiratorial aspect ties it
together in a way that Naked Lunch fails to do, and
was never meant to do, for Burroughs, and I wouldn't
take my facts from either book.

I certainly don't think Pynchon presents a version of
truth or history per se, in fact I think much of GR is
concerned with the idea that history can't be
presented with certainty, and that's tantalizing in
itself; its paranoid history is presented in a tone of
self-doubt, by a preterite omniscient narrator who's a
bit of a schlub.  A-a-a-nd connecting everything at
the end wasn't his concern.  It is a work of fiction,
and tries it's best to act like one.>>

This seems to me entirely sensible.  You might,
however, search the words "Millison" and "Pynchon
teaches us" in the p-list archive to gain another
perspective.




		
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