Pynchon's misdirection

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Doug wrote:

>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.

Doug, where is your own spirit of fun and adventure? Nothing is "wrong with 
entertaining the notion and doing the reading and writing to flesh out the 
notion?" And nothing is "wrong with reading Hollander's essay and checking 
it against the Pynchon text and having fun doing that?" In fact, I think 
it's fairly obvious that that is exactly what I have been doing in this 
post, a-and I guess it's even my "idea of fun." You wrote in a previous 
post:

>How many are "too many" connections when connections seem to be
>Pynchon's fundamental point, or, maybe better to say it's noting
>connections and trying to figure out which are worth heeding.

Again, that's exactly what I'm doing here, in this post and in all my other 
posts on this list. In Hollander's case I mostly find connections which are 
not worth heeding, but in other cases I find plenty of connections that are 
worth heeding, and I gladly point it out on the list when I do. I try to see 
the big picture, Doug, and it would be great if you could do so too, rather 
than invite me to go bark up a different tree, on the basis of my 
disagreeing with one critic. You may be able to "hold contradictory ideas 
simultaneously," you may be large, and you may contain multitudes, like old 
Walt, but it doesn't hurt to examine these individual contradictory ideas a 
bit closer once in a while. That is, at any rate, my idea of fun an 
adventure.

>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.

You're skirting awfully close here to those ad hominem remarks you claim to 
dislike so much, Doug, and I think it's pretty evident who is trying to 
censure whom. Please extend me the courtesy of keeping your eyes on the 
ball, not my balls.

>>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?

Come on, Doug. You and I and everybody else know that "I don't buy it" is 
just a colloquial way of saying "I'm not convinced." Pardon if I offend, but 
I think you're being a tad more literal-minded here than may be called for 
;-)

>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?

Again, absolutely no harm, but what's the harm in discussing the thought 
experiment and see whether it holds up? You're trying to ascribe some 
viewpoints to me that I don't hold: That it's somehow wrong for Hollander to 
make the arguments he does. Nothing could be further from my mind, and I'm 
indeed grateful, as you put it, that Hollander has been "doing the research 
and sharing it with us gratis." I'm assuming, however, that he is kindly 
sharing his interpretations with us because he would like them to be 
discussed in a sober manner. That is what I've doing here, citing plenty of 
textual evidence, and your intimations that I somehow try to censure 
Hollander are frankly uncalled for, as is the characterization of the 
viewpoints you disagree with as "Hollander bashing." That is a cheap (to 
continue my economic metaphors) rhetorical trick which reduces sober and 
nuanced arguments to unreflective posturing, and which succeeds in nothing 
but curtailing what could otherwise have been an interesting discussion. And 
having said that, I think I'll go barking up a different tree.

Best,

Tore

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