The 'Waste' Law | Pynchon's genealogical influences

[Daniel Harper]

On Nov 21, 2007 11:04 AM, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:

<snip>

>So... I find the Pynchon family background no less (and no more) interesting
>than it is to know about 17th-century William and John Hathorne when I think
>about The Scarlet Letter and The House of The Seven Gables, or to know that
>some of Sir Walter Scott's ancestors had played a part in some of the Scots
>and Border historical events he wrote about. Did that "personal" history
>play a part in making those books what they are? Yes. Can I imagine other
>authors, without such histories, taking up those or similar themes? Yes; in
>fact, others did. Arthur Miller managed to shape at least as much of the
>Salem, MA of our mental landscape as Hawthorne did, without any genealogical
>links at all.

<snip>

I think you're misreading me slightly, probably through my own
ineloquence. I'm not arguing that P is deliberately setting out dirty
laundry, but that on some level he's using the events of his family's
past as a sort of furniture in his fictional universes... the way
another writer might use a table or a lamp from his or her house in a
novel. But the lit-crit crowd (even amateurs such as ourselves) like
to focus on such biographical details as "tells" to the "true meaning"
of the work... by obscuring such links by being a cipher, we are
forced to view the material as P intended -- as a standalone.

-- 
...the insanely, endlessly diddling play of a chemist whose molecules
are words...
--Daniel Harper