Keesey: Rereading Pynchon

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Douglas Keesey is the author of the article and, yes, John Doe, from 
all accounts he has read the SL Intro. Keesey's actually written quite 
a bit about Pynchon's work and, to give him a bit of leeway, he's 
reading the "gender coding of Callisto's philosophical beliefs" (i.e. 
that "virtu" = virility, for example) to get to the "self-castration" 
idea. It's a well-constructed argument, well-supported, with some 
really interesting insights (as opposed to labelling the story as a 
"tight gem", I guess, er ... LOL) and source notes, but I still don't 
really buy the thesis overall. I don't think the last paragraph implies 
that Callisto and Aubade are about to commit suicide, which I think is 
the way that Keesey is reading it. I've always read it as a sort of 
sarcastic comment on what Callisto believes is about to happen -- the 
heat death of the universe.

At the opening of the essay Keesey cites Martin Seymour-Smith, who 
apparently described Pynchon as "a writer who cannot be categorized, 
and whose impact is by now fast-diminishing". Seymour-Smith's 
conclusion, cited by Keesey: "Of course Pynchon is not 'great' or even 
almost great - he is not in that category." (_The New Guide to Modern 
World Literature_ New York, Peter Bedrick Books, 1985, p. 146). There's 
more about why Seymour-Smith assesses Pynchon's first three books as 
"weak".

Only really glanced at the abstract before cutting and pasting; the 
typos in it ("uncertain ties", "fungal", "words") are pretty indicative 
of the quality of the editing overall. But it might actually be an idea 
to read the article before going off all half-cocked about it.

best

On 10/12/2005, at 1:55 PM, John Doe wrote:

> Seymor-Smith is on acid...."castration"??? yeaaaaahhhh
> -right...classic victim of the more you WANT to read
> into a work to fit your subconcious agendas, the more
> you DO read into the work...talk about not only
> straining credulity, but pushing the tertiary
> allegorical possibilities to the forefront of lame
> justification...I mean, has he even bothered to read
> Pynchon's into to Slow Learner?...sure, sure  I
> realize it's loaded with false humility, untenable
> self-effacing criticism ( such as his remark that he
> liked to use the word "tendril" a lot but has no idea
> even now what a tendril is; a guy who can digest the
> workings of rocket engineering and creatively
> transform the source material can easily look up
> "tendril" in the dictionary! ), but nonetheless,
> Pynchon was what,? 21 or 22 when he wrote it; he
> clearly had not developed the ranging power of his
> imagination and rendering skills to anywhere near the
> level that he arguably peaked at in his thirties ( as
> so many writers seems to do, incidentally ) when he
> was working on GR...Entropy is a tight gem for what it
> reveals about his humor, his preoccupation with the
> 'preterite', and for his love of scientific
> metaphors...it's a porthole onto some of his soon to
> be engrossing themes perhaps, but it is not to GR what
> "The Dead" is to Ulysses...ironically, no Pynchon was
> hardly a slow learner ( yet another phony play at
> self-undermining charm ) as his high school and
> Cornell transcripts one A after another...but to
> assume he had become the Sorcerer before he fumbled
> his way as an Apprentice is not very sensible...
>
>
>> A poorly-edited essay that addresses Martin
>> Seymour-Smith's judgement
>> (in his 1985 _New Guide to Modern World Literature_)
>> that Pynchon is
>> not a "great writer". Basically it's a fairly
>> bizarre reading of the
>> short story 'Entropy', inferring Callisto's
>> "castration" and his and
>> Aubade's ultimate suicide. Pdf available.
>>
>> '"A Flaw Not Only In Him": Rereading Thomas Pynchon'
>>
>> by Douglas Keesey. _boundary 2_ Spring/Fall 1988,
>> Vol. 15/16 Issue 3/1,
>> pp. 215-237.
>>
>> Abstract
>> The article focuses on an appraisal of the writings
>> of Thomas Pynchon.
>> Critics who have had trouble categorizing Pynchon's
>> three novels,
>> particularly the kaleidoscopically allusive,
>> 760-page _Gravity's
>> Rainbow_, have naturally turned to Pynchon's short
>> fiction for help.
>> 'Entropy' has proven the favorite, anthologized and
>> discussed more
>> often than any other Pychon short story because, as
>> one critic put it,
>> "The significance of the story grows, in retrospect,
>> as an aesthetic
>> source and a preface for the novels that follow. In
>> contrast to their
>> uncertain ties, this work is almost proverbial in
>> its clarity and
>> simplicity." With its contrapuntal or fungal
>> structure, "Entropy," has
>> served numerous critics as the strong, clear source
>> against which to
>> understand all the complex words that came after.
>>
>> best
>>
>>
>
>
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