Two Encyclopedias, Fat and Thin Spoiler AtD 1045

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: Joseph Hutchison <joe at jhwriter.com>
>
>OK. It¹s easy for speculation regarding Pynchon¹s meaning(s) to veer from
>the well grounded to the unlikely to the...well...paranoid. Maybe it¹s a
>matter of taste, but I can¹t get down with counting words and then reading
>them like tea-leaves.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I also think that the counting of words is a 
bit on the excessive side, but in the end I guess it comes down to the 
individual reader's temperament. FWIW, I do believe that some degree of 
paranoia is necessary when reading Pynchon. Not the paranoia that leads its 
practitioner to believe that "everything is connected" (GR, 703), and that 
every last adverb has significance beyond the obvious. But the refutation of 
this total paranoia as a valid reading strategy doesn't necessarily lead to 
its opposite: "anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a 
condition not many of us can bear for long" (GR, 434). In between the total 
paranoia and anti-paranoia, however, we find "creative paranoia" (GR, 638) 
which allows its practitioner to project a certain amount of connections and 
create local, meaningful patterns, while remaining conscious that other 
patterns are possible, and that these alternative interpretative structures 
may be just as valid as the ones he has created himself. Creative paranoia 
projects - or rather: maps - temporary ad hoc-structures which allow the 
reader to negotiate the confusing wilderness of a novel like GR.

When I think of reading and paranoia (not clinical paranoia, but paranoia as 
a metaphor for creating connections), I've found it useful to apply M. H. 
Abrams old division between "The Mirror and the Lamp". Originally, Abrams 
used these metaphors to describe the relation between classicism and 
romanticism, respectively (one mirrors the world as it is, and one projects 
oneself upon the world), but I find the metaphors useful w/r/t readerly 
paranoia as well: 'Lamp paranoia' is equivalent to the total paranoia 
described above: It projects too many connections altogether, and imposes a 
structure which can't rightly be said to be present in the text. 'Mirror 
paranoia' on the other hand maps connections that can to some extent be said 
to be present in the text, and this form of paranoia - creative paranoia or 
mirror paranoia - seems to be a more valid reading strategy than lamp 
paranoia. It is sensitive to latent connections, but not to such an extent 
that it projects a world of its own. Mirror paranoia doesn't project a 
world, it maps it, and as far as I am concerned, Oedipa's biggest sin in Lot 
49 is that she projects a world - a world that blinds her to the real one 
around her, with all its suffering preterite and human waste.

This ties into your excellent (and creatively paranoid) interpretation of 
Oedipa's name: The original Oedipus was blinded and this blindness applies 
to Oedipa as well, albeit metaphorically. She is so busy chasing revelations 
and projecting a world that she doesn't notice the real world around her, 
and on more than one occasion Pynchon describes her inability to see. When 
she first receives the letter from Mucho with the misprint, we are told that 
"At first she didn't see" (46), and towards the end of the novel, her sight 
hasn't improved. On p. 179 we are told twice (a bit of redundancy so that 
the message would not be lost) that Oedipa would have discovered the ugly 
truth of a dispossessed alternative America all around her "if only she'd 
looked" - "if only she'd looked".... But she doesn't, blinded by her own 
projected world, her rampant lamp paranoia.

Best,

Tore

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