Two Encyclopedias, Fat and Thin Spoiler AtD 1045
Tore Rye Andersen
torerye at hotmail.com
Sat Jan 13 04:21:02 CST 2007
>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
_________________________________________________________________
Få 250 MB gratis lagerplads på MSN Hotmail: http://www.hotmail.com
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list