Pynchon's misdirection

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: robinlandseadel@[omitted]

>So Dave reposts "Pynchon's Inferno" by Charles Hollander

>http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

>And I read it again, as if for the first time, and come across this:

>His leading us from R. Varo to M.T. Varro is a typical example of Pynchon’s 
>method for burying key information, which I term misdirection. We are given 
>a real historical name to check out, Remedios Varo, and upon searching for 
>it the name leads us to a cognate, Marcus Terentius Varro, who only happens 
>to have written 150 Menippean satires, which is Pynchon’s method of 
>alerting us that he has chosen to use the form of the Menippean satire. 
>This misdirection works by virtue of leading us from something in the text 
>to something outside the text, from one name to a cognate of that
>name, from a painter to a writer, from Varo to Varro to Menippean satire. 
>We shall see more of Pynchon’s misdirection shortly

I think the misdirection in this quote is Charles Hollander's. Why would a 
search for Remedios Varo's name 'lead us' to Marcus Terentius Varro? I know 
I am being literal-minded here, but the reference to Varo's painting works 
just fine in itself, without adding what seems to me a very dubious 
connection to the earlier satirist. If Pynchon had invented the name Varo, 
sure, but she's an actual person. It's not the only time Hollander has made 
what I consider slightly paranoid readings of Pynchon. His "Pynchon, JFK and 
the CIA: Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49" where he argues that Lot 
49 is an "encrypted meditation on the assassination of President John 
Fitzgerald Kennedy" seems to me to be a fine example of exactly the kind of 
over-interpretation that Lot 49 is a sustained critique of. In that article 
Hollander also 'unveils' several allusions that one has to make huge leaps 
of the imagination in order to 'discover'. Hollander's readings partake too 
much of a "Those Who Know, know"-rhetoric, and they remind me quite a bit of 
a passage on pp. 664-65 of GR which parodies just this kind of reading. Look 
it up, it's quite fun.

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