Pynchon's commencement address

[David Mugmon]

The following passage from M & D somehow seems apropos:

"...Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd,
only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to
be left within the reach of anyone in Power,—who need but touch her,
and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never
been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by
fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry
Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and
Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or
even the Curiosity, of Government..." (p.350)


On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 2:04 PM, David Kipen <kipend at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, sorry, not really. But I'm about to give a graduation speech myself
> next Sunday for the MFA students at Antioch in Southern California, and it
> just doesn't seem right to bloviate at them for 20 minutes without quoting
> the best writer I know. So my question to all you fellow keepers of the
> flame is: Where in the Pynchon corpus can I find the most eloquent
> exhortation -- either explicit ("Keep cool but care"), or implicit ("Now
> everybody--") -- about how to live honorably, or to write well, or at least
> somehow to keep the bastards at bay. Suggestions?
>
> All finest,
> David