Pynchon's misdirection

[pynchonoid]

--- Tore :
[...]

> 
> A) Do you really agree with Hollander that Lot 49 is
> an "encrypted 
> meditation on the assassination of President John
> Fitzgerald Kennedy", as he 
> claims in his Magic Eye-essay?
> 

Dude, where is your spirit of fun and adventure?  If
Lot 49 is not, finally, and definitively this, what
the heck is wrong with entertaining the notion and
doing the reading and writing to flesh out the notion?
And what's wrong with reading Hollander's essay and
checking it against the Pynchon text and having fun
doing that?  I mean, unless that's not a reader's idea
of fun, and if that's the case, the reader might just
be barking upp the wrong tree with Pynchon, whose text
invites interpretation and engages in it like no
other.

Like the reviewers who miss Pynchon's sense of humor
in ATD,  I think that element of Hollander's work
doesn't get its due, too.  He writes with wit, and
depth.

The sense of censure that I think I may detect
(forgive  me please if I go too deep for encrypted
meanings here ;) sounds like some of those folks in
the French Dept who helped me decide not to stay there
for a graduate degree. 

Yes, I agree with Hollander, re the encrypted
meditation.  And, No I don't. Both/and.  It's a Hindoo
thang. I'm not afraid to try to hold contradictory
ideas simultaneously - it tingles, actually.


> B) Do you really believe that Pynchon with Lot 49
> deliberately decided to 
> sit down and write a Menippean Satire?

See above.  Yes/No. Both/And. Including the Excluded
Middle.

> That belief must be 

"must be"?  Really? No doubt?  No possibility that the
critic might be conducting a thought experiment here? 
Or, that a reader might enjoy such an interpretation
just for the erudite ride?

Pardon if I offend, but I think you're being a tad
more literal-minded here than may be called for. 

[...] 
> I just don't buy it, 

I don't think it's for sale, Hollander's article is
there to make us think, he's not selling anything,
it's an inappropriate metaphor, imo. I can enjoy
Hollander's interpretations all the way up to
swallowing hook, line, sinker, although that's a
metaphor I like even less than the one that has the
critic trying to pressure a reader into an unwanted
purchase, and I can swallow, or inhale, or whatever,
too. Is criticism really such a grim business? "Must
be" this or that?  Who sounds hidebound now?  

I don't think it's out of line to read Pynchon as part
of an antique literary tradition, either.  Maybe
Hollander's is a theory that won't ultimately hold up,
but, again, what's the harm in making the thought
experiment and seeing what might come up?


> 
> Remedios Varo and her painting, with its obvious
> relevance to themes such as 
> isolation, solipsism, and projection, are the
> important things here, 

Sounds like a subjective opinion to me.

> I'll argue once again that the Varo/Varro-connection
> isn't worth heeding.

And I don't agree.  I think Hollander's article takes
a Pynchon reader on a ride worth taking, and I don't
agree with an approach to reading that says that you
can't draw outside the lines as established by a
critic who may err on the side of being too sober and
conservative. 

Good post, you've taken this a few steps beyond the
usual Hollander bashing, although not far enough for
my taste. 

No matter what you think of his interpretations,
Pynchon readers owe Hollander a debt of gratitude just
for doing the research and sharing it with us gratis.
That's not nothing.



 
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