Tours Pynchon Conference June 2007

[Clément Lévy]

Dear all, at last I was able to re-write the notes I took during the
conference, and they were carefully re-read before I post them here.
I'd also like to say that I went last week in the small town
(Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat) were Deleuze (I confirm the pronounciation
guidelines that one of us posted here: dölöz) was buried 12 years ago. I
took a picture of his grave (with my cellphone camera, poor quality). If
some of you are interested, I can send it by e-mail.
And don't forget: Keep cool, but care.
Clément

One-day Conference: Reading the Last Novel of Thomas Pynchon, Against the
Day
Tours, université François Rabelais, June 1st, 2007

The first reserve you should have about my commenting the conference is that
I am still reading the novel!

The speakers had been in Tours from the day before, but some of them finally
couldn't come to the conference: Russell Backman (University of Chicago) and
Claro (the French translator of AtD): their lectures would have been: "The
Chronotope of Inevitability: An Analysis of Free Will in TP's AtD" and "'As
if'."

The first to speak, after a short presentation of the conference and his
coordinator, Gilles Chamerois by the moderator, Georges-Claude Guilbert, was
thus Jon Hackett (University of Sussex) on "Freedom, Force and Space:
Pynchon's Politics of Aether." He linked a few great themes that have a
close relation to space-time in the novel with scientific but also mystic
theories contemporary to the time of the story. He evoked the episodes of
l'isola degli specchi, the Chums in Venice as a symbolic journey, the
railway story, and explained how German idealism in the 1890's could provide
an interpretation paradigm for facts and theories like aether being the
conducting medium of light, research on light pressure, and the manichean
concept of light and darkness. He mainly quoted Schelling on the possibility
of freedom in a world made of determinant forces, Deleuze on American
literature and deterritorialization and Zizek on Schelling. This paper was
interesting and Jon did a very good job on these philosophers' works. I wish
he would have also talked about what funny scientists like Wilhelm Reich
think of aether!

Charles Hollander then presented "Pynchon's Juvenilia and AtD: The Child is
Doppelgänger to the Father." His account on stories published by the young
Thomas Pynchon in the Oyster Bay School Newspaper put into focus a dominant
theme of these short story: justice, and the way Pynchon always made puns on
his characters' names, and how he used them for more than fifty years.
Pynchon's Hamster Columns were full of allusions to Dante, just as his later
works (as Charles Hollander already showed it in a paper presented in Malta
in June 2004 at the Transit of Venus Conference: "Pynchon: America's
Dante?"). But the author also linked his first character with real and
living persons whose names he kept under funny disguises, because he feels
somewhat concerned with anonymity. Darby Suckling is a name Pynchon first
used in his Columns and used later in The Secret Integration (1964). With
Lovelace, it is an allusion to 17th century British poetry. At the same
time, with Rosco, and then Bosco, he made allusions to a senator of the
state of New York, Rosco Concling. But this name is also linked with James
Garfield's. Many of these names hint about the hidden history of democracy
in America. Like other works by Charles Hollander, this paper was deep and
brilliant. A-and, as you know, these articles are on vheissu.info!

Our third speaker was Peter Vernon (université de Tours): "It Is Just Not
Cricket: Cricket as a Metaphor in AtD." He analyzed the many appearance of
cricket in the novel and was able to show us how this game, the imperial
game, is a game of balance and double-game and a paradigm of fair-play. It
is also a British coded language which allows some parallels with espionage.
Pete Vernon's paper was very funny, as cricket is a surprising game whose
vocabulary is very precise and appears in Against the Day.

After a delicious lunch in a "vieille ville" restaurant where a Swedish
student and I were cheerfully invited by G-C Guilbert, as two persons were
missing in the full cast, the first speaker of the afternoon was Paolo
Simonetti (Sapienza – Università di Roma): "Like Metaphor, Only Different."
I don't have a clear memory of this paper (did I eat to much? did I not keep
a clear mind? it's too bad!). Paolo Simonetti talked of the Stupendica and
her possible becoming the SMS Emperor-Maximilian. He recalled to us the
famous page on Athenian "metaphors" (public transportations) by Certeau in
The Practice of Everyday Life…

Bénédicte Chorier-Fryd (université de Poitiers) then made a very precise and
complete comment on a formula used by Thomas Pynchon in his
Amazon.comblurb: "Let the Reader Beware: The 'Minor Adjustments' of
Fiction in
Pynchon's AtD." She gave many examples of different kinds of adjustments:
topographic, narrative and textual, and modal adjustments. This presentation
was the result of a sharp query of evidences of semantic adaptations for
many terms used by the author to give the reader another look on America.
Béatrice Chorier-Fryd chose funny quotes of the novel and her paper was a
delight for the audience.

The next event in the afternoon was a round-table in which took part Luc
Herman (University of Antwerp), John Krafft (Miami University in Hamilton,
Ohio), Anne Battesti (université Paris 10 – Nanterre), Brigitte Félix
(université du Maine), Tim Ware (the Thomas Pynchon Homepage on
hyperarts.com) and the public. One of the main themes of the round-table was
wether Against the Day is boring, and if yes, why, or even what for. Luc
Herman presented a very accurate talk on fiction and reading, boredom and
interest in post-classical narrative. Taleability, he made clear, is a
process or, a negotiation between the audience and the topic, on the
different assets and fields of the narrative. According to Luc Herman, the
readers may have had expectations that Against the Day did not meet,
obviously by lack of measure. Tim Ware regretted that so many reviews were
hastily published while one should reserve his/her judgment on AtD for at
least ten years! Anne Battesti presented a short paper to show us how AtD
could be a tale of idiots. The bad taste of many episodes and the
western-novel pastiche could explain why many readers of the novel found it
boring. She made subtile comments on reduplication, opposition, disguise and
duplicity, "again" and "against" being from the same stem. The possibilities
of the novel being a dystopia or another menippean satire (according to
Frye's definition of the term) were also evoked. John Krafft recalled us
that in a letter written in the 1960's Pynchon stated that he wanted to
write a novel in a very traditional way, of a very conventional type!

The conference was a real success. The atmosphere was very cheerful and the
scholars who made it to Tours all had many good points to make on Against
the Day. Many questions were told, some answered. No doubt that the Munich
Pynchon Week will give us new hints on Pynchon's work! Gilles Chamerois will
have the texts published on the GRAAT website by this fall (
http://www.graat.fr/).
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