ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Paul Mackin wrote:

>Not to be too contrary but I don't  think it's quite correct to think  of  
>either the writer or the  reader of a work of fiction like AtD  as  
>"agreeing" or "disagreeing" with the actions of a particular  character in 
>the story.  We're not IN the story ourselves. Let the  other story 
>characters agree or disagree if they want to.

Call me old-fashioned, call me naive, but I'll reserve the right to 
"disagree" - no, scratch those quotation marks, to disagree, plain and 
simple - with any character who blows a trainload of other characters to 
smithereens. Sure, they're just inkmarks on paper, and we're not IN the 
story ourselves, but part of the pleasure and challenge of reading fiction - 
for me at least - is achieving that willing suspension of disbelief where 
the moral questions posed by a novel like AtD seem urgent and real, rather 
than just a jumble of words. IMO, much of the pleasure of reading Pynchon is 
that his fiction is so rich with those rare moments where - to quote GR - 
"words are only an eye-twitch away from the things they stand for" (100); 
where the "pencil words on your page [are] only delta-t from the things they 
stand for" (510).
And, for what it's worth, in long and confusing works such as GR, M&D and 
AtD, I think Pynchon very deliberately tries to drag the reader into the 
constructed world of the book. By immersing the reader in a complexity and 
confusion similar to the one the characters have to live through, or at 
least a textual equivalent of such complexity and confusion, Pynchon 
attempts to place the reader in much the same circumstances as his 
characters, inviting him or her to face some of the same moral quandaries 
(or to face some of the moral quandaries that his characters too often 
ignore). And I'd much rather be down in the mud with preterite Slothrop or 
Mason or Dixon or Frank, than aloof with The Chums of Chance or more 
sophisticated readers who have to view the doings below twice removed.

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