AtD and 9/11

[Paul Mackin]

On Aug 15, 2006, at 8:56 AM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> One of the problems with Mason & Dixon is the way anachronism is  
> incorperated into the story. It really  messes with that "Sonorous"  
> tone spoken of before, thrusting TRP's work further and further  
> into the realm of pure farce. As Pynchon ages---and face it  
> kiddies, he's quite aged now---his focus seems to be more and more  
> on the absurdity of it all. Maybe that more serious tone we read in  
> V, "49" and GR can never really come back, as it becomes harder to  
> take just about anything seriously, considering demise is immanent  
> and unavoidable. Of course, all the parallels with "Starbucks",  
> "blinking L.E.D.'s" and various food obsessions particular to the  
> late twentieth centuary constitute satire pointed directly to the  
> time in which M & D was written. As we find in all of Pynchon's books.
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
>
> The very fact that he DOES admonish the reader to see no parallels  
> between AtD and the present is a blatant indication that he is  
> being ironical.
>
>
>
> From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Date: August 15, 2006 6:25:31 AM EDT
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: AtD and 9/11
>
>
> Pynchon is certainly not in the habit of dictating how readers  
> should interpret his work - in fact, his very absence from the  
> public sphere probably has as much to do with a wish to let his  
> texts speak for themselves as with a wish for privacy. Michael  
> Naumann has once cited Pynchon for saying that the printed page is  
> all that matters, and in that respect, Pynchon is one of the least  
> didactic writers around.
> The very fact that he DOES admonish the reader to see no parallels  
> between AtD and the present is a blatant indication that he is  
> being ironical. And in addition, it is a pretty clever way of  
> leading our attention to the parallels in a non-coercive manner. It  
> reminds me of the old joke where you tell someone that under no  
> circumstances are they allowed to think about elephants. In any  
> normal person, the first thing that pops into one's mind after such  
> an admonition will invariably be a huge herd of stampeding elephants.
>
>
>
> 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?
>
> DG

I'd say dear readers I wrote this  book for you, not for George Bush,  
Donald Rumsfeld., Dick Cheney, or any other such people who need or  
are in any position to use advice about what's wrong with current  
American foreign policy. .

  In other words it's a work  of fiction not a political  rant.
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