TPPM Watts: (7) You

[Paul Nightingale]

The textual use of "you" to bring the reader into the account is an
important aspect of this narrative strategy, for "you" is both a
generalised 'one' ('the one to whom this happens) and a more particular
'you-who-reads' ('this is what would happen to you').

According to Seed, "the 'you' draws the reader imaginatively into the
dramatic predicament of the blacks. Being written for the NYT Magazine
[sic] Pynchon must have had a primarily white readership in mind and
therefore throughout his piece exploits perspective to force some kind
of awareness on to the reader." (The Fictional Labyrinths of TP, 152)

Well yes, so far as it goes; but Seed's account, as I've already
indicated, doesn't go far enough. He suggests here that some kind of
empathy on the part of the white NYer is Pynchon's goal. However, to go
back to the discussion of the essay's title, I'm suggesting such empathy
might be enjoyed by a tourist; consequently I'm arguing throughout that
a deconstruction of this kind of 'literary tourism' is what the text is
aiming for.

We have to consider the way in which that "you" appears in the text, its
function at any given time.

The first time "you" appears is in paragraph 5's reference back to the
opening event, the Deadwyler shooting. Just as Watts is looking back to
the riots of the previous August, so is the text looking back to its own
opening scenes. The reappearance of Deadwyler signals the text's renewed
interest in the particular (or microsocialogical discourse). 

In paragraph 5 "you" is the black recipient of the cop's attention ("how
very often the cop does approach you with his revolver ready"). It might
just be important that the first use of "you" here collapses the
distinction between two separate narrative strands. For Seed's argument
to hold up, that distinction must be maintained: the tourist can only
empathise by maintaining their distance.

Subsequently "[b]oth of you" includes the cop in a situation, a
relationship or series of interactions, a ritual that transform all
participants: that "night after night ... these traditional scenes
continue to be played out" reminds us that life isn't moving forward as
political reformism would have it (and the opposition between linear and
cyclical time, as I've noted before, is often key to Pynchon's writing).