Subject: Re: AtD RE: ATD Spoilers

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 29, 2006, at 3:38 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> Would be interested in yr thoughts on ...
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0208&msg=69706
>
> --- Jason Helms <helmstreet at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I dig that Dave.  I've heard Crying of Lot 49 read
>> as the great anti-detective story (along with
>> Lolita and various works by Eco and Auster) ...
>
> See also, say, The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet ...
>
>> ... and think it fits.  The idea of "unconcealing"
>> is an interesting one in that it's Heidegger's
>> translation of Aletheia (Greek for "truth) which is
>> literally an un-forgetting.  This works well with
>> the whodunits of the western canon--but I'm
>> interested in how this operates in the
>> post/metafiction of the last 50-150 yrs.  Does
>> unconcealing begin to operate as poesis?  Just a
>> thought.
>
> I think GR in particular might prove bountiful ground
> for Heidegger hunting ...

and then there is the case where there is nothing to conceal, but  
unconcealment is needed anyway

an American writer in Paris whose friends all suspect of being a CIA  
agent which he isn't

he gets tired of denying he's a spy and decides to go along with   
the  gag, and to do it up right builds himself an elaborate "cover"  
in order to give his secret agent persona a little more  
believability, which in the end gets him into a great deal of trouble

so in other words to be a really plausible CIA agent he has to  
unconceal himself by building up a plausible concealment

this all happens in a book I just read--My Life in CIA by Harry  
Mathews (American member of the Oulipo movement)

Very amusing an well written.







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