AtD 146 lines (spoiled)

[John Carvill]

<< Doesn't reading it this way (and I admit I'm tempted to read it this 
way myself) have little if anything to do with the text itself, and 
everything to do with the expectations we bring to the text? >>

Yes. But we then have to add to our consideration, the author's
awareness of the expectations we bring to the text. It's not as if we
Pynchon readers have this tendency to read meanings into things, and
that tendency remains separate from the methods and intentions of the
author. Instead, didn't we (to one extent or another) actually develop
this tendency through contact with the author's previous works, meaning
no-one could be more aware than Pynchon himself of the highly-charged
potential for reading resonances into  what could otherwise be taken as
innocuous lines of text? And of course this is the *opening* line, so
it's a line that's even more heavily freighted with potential
interpretations than, arguably, almost any other line in the book. So
maybe the tricksiest manoeuvre Pynchon could throw at us would be to
open the book with a line which has no 'hidden' meaning or resonance at
all, but is just a simple narrative device? In other words, we also have
to consider the author's awareness of our awareness of his awareness
of........







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