Tours Pynchon Conference June 2007

[Bryan Snyder]

I seriously need to learn how to google something before blindly asking all
you nice folks a simple question... 

My bad.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan Snyder [mailto:wilsonistrey at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 11:46 AM
To: 'Ya Sam'; 'clemlevy at gmail.com'; 'pynchon-l at waste.org'
Subject: RE: Tours Pynchon Conference June 2007

Yeah, thanks for the correspondence!  

Does anyone know where I could get my grubby mitts on these papers?  

B

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Ya Sam
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2007 6:55 AM
To: clemlevy at gmail.com; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: Tours Pynchon Conference June 2007

Thanks a million, Clement, that was awesome!

The paper on cricket and the discussion of AtD's 'taleability' look 
especially appealing to me. I hope they would get published some day.


>From: "Clément Lévy" <clemlevy at gmail.com>
>To: p-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Tours Pynchon Conference June 2007
>Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:27:57 +0200
>
>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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