Enough Vollmann Bashing!: A Plea

[Jonathon Sturgeon]

Hey,

Sorry!  My Vollmann rant was based on something I read in the archive from
earlier this month.  My frustration stems from the fact that this is not the
first time the mention of Vollmann has caused needless & protracted attacks
on his writings (check the archives).  I should have been more clear about
the source of my frustration.  I'm cool with everything now...sorry for
disturbance.

The concept of a vanishing mediator originates with Frederic Jameson.

I say that Vollmann personifies the concept of the vanishing mediator in his
narratives for several reasons.

1.  Big George (Georg FW Hegel?), the shape-shifter in _You Bright and Risen
Angels_ seems to be the archetype.  Big George dictates the events of the
novel to a room of programmers, a room in which "Vollmann" sits typing out
the dictated narrative and occasionally is able to leak through and color
the story with commentary.  The "Vollmann" in YB&RA is the vanishing
mediator, he vanishes into the flow of history (the narrative) and allows
for mediation between several fronts (the flow of history, the reader, the
"characters" of the novel, Vollmann).

2.  This concept is concretized & vastly improved in Vollmann's later
historical novels.  In Europe Central, for instance, it seems to me that
there are a minimum of two narrators.  A)  Blumentritt (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Blumentritt), who is mentioned in the
epigraph of the (bravura) opening section. B) "Vollmann" a researcher,
commentator from 2003 (when Vollmann is writing).  Blumentritt (or the Nazi
narrator) narrates the stories, and is himself commented upon by
Vollmann--you often have to pay close attention to who exactly is
commenting, for one vanishes into the other.

3.  The Epigraph of the chapter "Premonitions of the Ideal" in YB&RA is from
the preface to Hegel's Phenomenology:
In this movement the passive Subject itself perishes...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20070426/de790a83/attachment.html>