Keesey: Rereading Pynchon

[John Doe]

naaaahhhhhh....I don't think we have to necessarily
read through the entire contents of certain texts to
get the main thrust, or even the main subtexts; for
example, would you feel the need to read through every
word of the collected works of Tipper Gore to get a
feel for her moral and ethical point of departure? Or
Rush Lame-Ba? Sure, I've been surprised and overturned
my initial reaction to ( what I thought ) was the
substance of a writer's argument many times, but as I
get older I trust my judgement more, since, with
experience ,I've learned to recognize certain cues
much more readily...and I STILL maintain he's pushing
the Freudian Forces a tad too much in his reading of
Entropy...I agree with you that Callisto appears to be
more a victim of living in some sort of arrested
anticipation - of a huge, calamitous Event, perhaps,
that will never really manifest itself, hence he can
been construed as a True Paranoid...but he also is a
bit of a Maxwell's Demon in his stewardship of the
bird; attempting to transfer life force from where it
isn't to where it should be ( or where he wants it to
be )....the sexual identity angle is just not where I
think Pyncon was going with this story at all....


--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam
> protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> >
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com