Rocketmen and Wastelands

[David Morris]

On 10/27/06, Daniel Julius <daniel.julius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Academic papers are supposed to be about objective truth, right?  "Pynch
> meant this when he said this."  (I think professors stress this more now to
> preemptively convince parents who want their kids to learn a trade or a hard
> science that there is value in this seemingly frivolous activity).  This
> ostensible devotion to objectivity flies directly in the face of naming fun,
> which is like one of the most subjective categories there is.
>
> And also, yer right, dude is a senior in college, he has to fit into his
> teachers' mold before he can break it later.  You know, if graduate school
> doesn't just beat the theory into him more, which I bet it does.  He's got
> to publish, right?  He can't write or teach in a discursive language that
> his peers don't use.
>
> Point is, I'm starting to believe that if you want to talk about the fun in
> literature, you better drag yr ass into journalism, lest academia squeeze
> the life out of it for you.

Yeah.  I don't expect to have fun when I read "scholarly" essays, but
most often PoMo analysis is so full of jargon that it renders the
simplest concept into the nearly unintelligible.  At least this one is
pretty straightforward.

I have to admit that I didn't make it past the intro (yet), but I
thought his Oedipus/Narcissus binary analysis of Pynchon's main
characters was interesting, especially in terms of their responses to
alienating/enticing closed-loop systems of world-relationship.