AtD and 9/11

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 15/08/2006, at 5:42 PM, David Gentle wrote:

> If you were Pynchon and you'd just written a book that made no 
> concious reference to the modern world, that was just a historical 
> novel (and I'm not saying that AtD is that but stay with me) how would 
> you go about addressing that fact (if you felt that you needed to) in 
> a blurb you'd been asked to write?

It's to do with the tone of the statement in the context of that 
paragraph. If you read sarcasm or irony into it (which I think is more 
than reasonable, unavoidable, even), then it actually means the 
opposite of what it says. If you choose to read it literally, without 
any hint of irony, well, I guess it means just what it says.

I think it is meant sarcastically, or sardonically, and that Pynchon is 
referring to "the present day", in a knowingly tongue-in-cheek way, as 
being a time of "unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, 
moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places". That reading of 
it would seem to be more in tune with the tone of the rest of the 
blurb. And each of those phrases does seem apposite. And I think he 
fully expects readers to "get" it.

It's possible, just, that the sarcasm is double-edged (blank irony), 
and that he is also taking a poke at those who infer references to and 
opinions about specific current events which happened *after* the time 
of writing of whichever text (like using GR to propagandise about, say, 
the revolt in Chechnya, for example), but that might be drawing a long 
bow.

And I guess it's also possible that the sarcastic quip applies only to 
the preceding sentence in the blurb, and not to the subject matter and 
themes of the novel itself. But I doubt it. (I actually think that 
comment gives pretty much open slather to the WWPD crowd. In fact, it 
probably has something to do with a conception of history as a cyclical 
phenomenon -- that "peaks and troughs" notion back in V.)

I'm also wondering now whether "the Day" in the title could (also) 
refer to 9/11 (as well as the Biblical "Day of Judgement"). Every other 
man and his dog seems to have written about it.

best