AtDTDA (4) 117 'harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo'
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Mon Mar 19 13:39:05 CDT 2007
John Carvill:
There are any number of instances throughout the book
where we might pause and wonder about this, and of
course the most obvious case is the Chums and their
balloon, whether the Chums are 'real' people, whose
adventures are turned into fiction by the narrator who
speaks of his 'harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo'.
Or are the Chums, within the fictional world of the book,
fictional? And if they are, then what does that imply about
the others with whom they interact? It's all a satisfyingly
slippery and maybe unresolvable tangle of questions.
Whichever way you try to look at it it dosn't quite stack
up. In the 'real' world of Against the Day, are there a
lot of airships peopled by daring adventurer crews?
Is the earth hollow? There are plenty of suggestions
that the Chums are not quite of 'this' world, and have
only a glancing acquaintance with it.
The word we're looking for here is "Metafiction".
Spectrum: Metafiction is thus an elastic term which
cover a wide range of fictions. There are those novels
at one end of the spectrum which take fictionality as a
theme to be explored . . . whose formal self-consciousness
is limited. At the center of this spectrum are those texts that
manifest the symptoms of formal and ontological insecurity
but allow their deconstructions to be finally recontextualized
or 'naturalized' and given a total interpretation . . . Finally,
at the furthest extreme that, in rejecting realism more
thoroughly, posit the world as a fabrication of competing
semiotic systems which never correspond to material
conditions, ...(Waugh 18-19)
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/postmodernism/metafiction.htm
Explicit use of metafictional technique, as Waugh describes
it, stems from modernist questioning of consciousness and
'reality.' Several common epithets used to describe
contemporary metafiction are: self conscious, introspective,
introverted, narcissistic or auto-representational (Currie 14).
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Metafiction.html
Their fateful decision to land would immediately embroil
them in the byzantine politics of the region and
eventually they would find themselves creeping
perilously close to outright violation of the Directives
relating to Noninterference and Height Discrepancy,
which might easily have brought an official hearing,
and perhaps even disfellowship from the National
Organization. For a detailed account of their
subsequent narrow escapes from the increasingly
deranged attentions of the Legion of Gnomes, the
unconscionable connivings of a certain international
mining cartel, the sensual wickedness pervading the
royal court of Chthonica, Princess of Plutonia, and the
all-but-irresistible fascination that subterranean monarch
would come to exert, Circe-like, upon the crew of
Inconvenience (Miles, as we have seen, in particular),
readers are referred to The Chums of Chance in the
Bowels of the Earth---for some reason one of the less
appealing of this series, letters having come in as far
away as Tunbridge Wells, England, expressing displeasure,
often quite intense, with my harmless little
intraterrestrial scherzo. AtD 117,
First off, my mind immediately wandered to Ingmar Bergman's
realization of the three little genie in his film version of Mozart's
The Magic Flute. He has three little boy sopranos in cute little
outfits entering and exiting in a charmingly anachronistic airship.
They have allegiance to neither Sarastro or the Queen of
the NIght, they are supranational, if you will. They function
perfectly and solely as deus ex machina:
Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase that is used to
describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable
character, device, or event introduced suddenly
in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation
or untangle a plot. . . .
. . . .It originated with Greek and Roman theater,
when a mechane would lower actors playing a god
or gods on stage to resolve a hopeless situation.
The phrase is often translated as "god from the
machine". The machine referred to in the phrase is
the crane device employed in the task
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina
The CoC will be lowered to the stage quite a few times, underscoring
the metafictional uses of the CoC. The "deus ex machina" plot devices
are a mainstay of all fantasy fiction, and the titles for the fictional CoC
series echo not only Tom Swift, but Harry Potter, among others. The
Star Trek references enable the author to make that concept of the
"series" adventures more like an ongoing comic routine,
Pynchon having already mined Star Trek for jokes in Vineland. . . .
Justin found his father and Zoyd in the back of a pickup,
watching "Say Jim, " a half-hour sitcom based on "Star Trek,"
in which all the actors were black except for the
Communications Officer, a freckled white redhead named
Lieutenant O'Hara. Whenever Spock came on the bridge,
everybody made Vulcan hand salutes and went around
high-threeing.
Vineland, 370
. . . .continues with the same sorts of T.V. in-jokes in AtD:
. . . . eventually they would find themselves creeping
perilously close to outright violation of the Directives
relating to Noninterference and Height Discrepancy,
which might easily have brought an official hearing,
and perhaps even disfellowship from the National
Organization. . . .
Pointing in the general direction of the well known "Prime Directive":
As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance
with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred,
no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the healthy
development of alien life and culture. Such interference
includes the introduction of superior knowledge, strength,
or technology to a world whose society is incapable of
handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel
may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their
lives and/or their ship unless they are acting to right an
earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said
culture. This directive takes precedence over any and
all other considerations, and carries with it the highest
moral obligation.
http://www.70disco.com/startrek/primedir.htm
In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive,
Starfleet's General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding
principle of the United Federation of Planets; The Prime
Directive dictates that there be no interference with the
natural development of any primitive society, chiefly
meaning that no primitive culture can be given or exposed
to any information regarding advanced technology or the
existence of extraplanetary civilizations. It also forbids any
effort to improve or change in any way the natural course
of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned
and kept completely secret. 'Primitive' is defined as any
culture which has not yet attained warp drive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
Anyway, we're already "primed" for a joke, there's some more set-up:
. . . .For a detailed account of their
subsequent narrow escapes from the increasingly
deranged attentions of the Legion of Gnomes, the
unconscionable connivings of a certain international
mining cartel, the sensual wickedness pervading the
royal court of Chthonica. . . .
Gnomes:
A gnome is a legendary creature characterized by
its very small size and subterranean lifestyle.
emphasis on the word "subterranean"
Mining is underground and all over AtD and then there's:
Chthonic (from Greek-khthonios, of the earth, from
khthon, earth; pertaining to the Earth; earthy)
designates, or pertains to, gods or spirits of the
underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion.
Back to AtD:
. . . .Princess of Plutonia, and the all-but-irresistible
fascination that subterranean monarch would come to
exert, Circe-like, upon the crew of Inconvenience
(Miles, as we have seen, in particular),
Plutonia yields up:
Pluto is an alternative name for the Greek god Hades,
but was more often used in Roman mythology in their
presentation of the god of the underworld. He abducted
Proserpina (Gr. Persephone), and her mother Ceres
(Gr. Demeter) caused winter in her grief. Although he
is often envisioned today as evil (for his similarities to
the Christian Satan) the Romans did not view him as
such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(mythology)
Circe, daughter of the sun, was a sorceress
best known for her ability to turn men into
animals with her magic wand. The daughter
of Perse and Helios, and whose daughter is
Aega (goddess of the sun) she is remembered
for her encounter with Odysseus and his men,
and renowned for her knowledge of magic and
poisonous herbs.
When Odysseus and his men landed in Aeaea,
his crew later met with Circe and were turned into pigs.
Circe's spells however had no effect on Odysseus who
earlier was given an herb by Hermes to resist her power.
Circe realizing she was powerless over him lifted the spell
from the crew and welcomed them in her home. After about
a year when Odysseus leaves she warns them of the sirens
they will encounter on their journey. Circe and Odysseus
also bore a child together named Telegonus who later
ruled over the Tyrsenians.
Circe also has the powers for spiritual purification as she
purifies the Argonauts for the murder of Apsyrtus.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/circe.html
(This, by the way, points to the underlying "witchyness" of Miles,
he being unusually susceptible to the considerable charmes of the old ways.)
Then turning to the reader, our beloved author addresses his
audience directly:
readers are referred to The Chums of Chance in the
Bowels of the Earth---for some reason one of the less
appealing of this series, letters having come in as far
away as Tunbridge Wells, England, expressing
displeasure, often quite intense, with my harmless little
intraterrestrial scherzo.
Triple underscoring the metafictional nature of the passage by addressing us as
the author of this "harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo". "Intraterrestrial", of course meaning "Underground", as does just everything
else in this passage and as we all should know by now, the scherzo as generally
heard in symphonies and sonatas was developed by Beethoven as a natural
outgrowth of the combination Minuet/Trio movement, usually the next to last in
within a sonata, and means "joke". I'm gonna offer up a wild guess here, and
suggest that the Author is tweaking us about "Vineland" here, though I'm not
sure if's he's got an e-mail he managed to cop from out in "Tunbridge Wells,
England" while lurking at our site and retaining it in storage at his Mahatthan
bunker., I'll bet ya anything he's aware of all sorts of published and
blogged disapproval for "my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo."
Some reviewers, looking for another literary tour de force,
were disappointed by Pynchon's straightforward tale of
Sixties radicals undermined by COINTELPRO, the federal
government's notorious program of infiltrating the
counterculture.
Pynchon’s main goal is to dramatize the American
government’s repression of its people in the early 1980s.
The outlines of the Repression have been clear for a long time.
The problem is that the struggle seems long lost. Re-reading
Vineland during the steady loss of civil liberties during the
George W. Bush regime, we are reminded of the long genesis
of the repression: police used as strike-breakers in the 19th
century, and in Hollywood in the 1930s, the COINTELPRO
activities, and the 1980s war on drugs (mainly marijuana)
in the novel.
. . . .The central co-optation of the novel is Frenesi Gates'
rather inexplicable drift into becoming a "snitch," apparently
out of lust for the novel's villain, Brock Vond, a federal
prosecutor.
http://www.thesatirist.com/books/Vineland.html
Of course, Frenesi Gates' tale is a continuation of the Traverse Family story
line in AtD. And that "rather inexplicable drift" has its part to play as well.
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