Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre

[Joe Allonby]

No! No! No1 They're about work!

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 9:00 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Better stated than my thin gruel.....Okay, M & D is also World Historical
> the majority cry out (I project)......
>
> And, yes "V." is a teeth-cutter, BUT I say it has, like teeth embedded
> behind one's baby teeth, many key lifetime themes, tropes, ideas, etc.
> Hereros. Historical quest. Animate/Inanimate. Sacred/Profane. Loose but
> wide overarching metaphors--V.; structure--parts are akin if not named so--
> and more...
>
> Mr. Taxonomist
>
>
> --- On Fri, 10/3/08, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>
> > Subject: RE: Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Date: Friday, October 3, 2008, 3:45 AM
>  > Mark Kohut wrote:
> >
> > > The World History novels. A trilogy.
> > > "V."
> > > "Gravity's Rainbow"
> > > "Against the Day"
> > >
> > > The contemorary (or recent past) American novels
> > >
> > > - -- "C of Lot 49"
> > > - ----"Vineland"
> > > - ----new one
> > >
> > > The historical American novel
> > > - ---Mason & Dixon
> >
> > Squeezing huge, uncategorizable novels into neat litttle
> > boxes? Heck, count me in!
> >
> > I'll subscribe to your first two categories, but
> > I'll rearrange the works a bit:
> > M&D definitely belongs to the World History novels,
> > whereas V. doesn't belong
> > anywhere. V. was written before Pychon really came of age
> > as a writer, and in
> > many ways he cut his teeth on that novel. Later, I think he
> > conceived what we could
> > call his World Historical Project, but I think V. was
> > written before that idea.
> >
> > GR, M&D and AtD, on the other hand, have World History
> > written all over them.
> > They all span several continents (one third of M&D
> > takes place in Europe and Africa),
> > they all take place right on the brink of major historical
> > cusps (The Enlightenment,
> > Modernity, and Postmodernity), and they all try to salvage
> > some of the many ideas
> > from these historical periods that have later been tossed
> > into the Dustbin of History.
> >
> > At a first glance, M&D may seem stylistically different
> > from AtD and GR, but the
> > stylistic difference is a natural consequence of what I
> > believe to be a conscious
> > project in these three novels: To write them in a style
> > consistent with the period
> > they depict. Pynchon tries to reconstruct the complexity of
> > these historical cusps;
> > to describe the past not as past, but as the present that
> > it once was. An in order
> > to do so, he reconstructs (not altogether faithfully) the
> > styles corresponding to each
> > period: The archaic language of M&D, the more modern
> > but sometimes stilted style
> > of AtD, and the ultramodern vernacular of GR.
> >
> > Finally, look at the structural similarities of these three
> > novels: As opposed to V.,
> > Lot 49, and VL, all three are divided into a few named
> > parts (3, 4, and 5), and all three
> > have seventy-something chapters.
> >
> > M&D, AtD and GR constitute Pynchon's Great Global
> > Trilogy, describing the overall
> > historical development of the world (the western world in
> > particular, it should be
> > pointed out) through the most important historical cusps of
> > the past 250 years.
> > Incidentally, the three phases covered by these three
> > novels (The Enlightenment,
> > Modernity, and Postmodernity), correspond nicely with Ernst
> > Mandel's three stages
> > of capitalism: market capitalism, the monopoly stage or the
> > stage of imperialism, and
> > late multinational capitalism. These three stages in turn,
> > argues Mandel, correspond to
> > three stages of technology: mechanical, electrical, and
> > electronical. And these three
> > different stages of technology play huge parts in M&D,
> > AtD, and GR, respectively.
> > I'm not saying that Pynchon read Mandel, but I do think
> > that his Global Trilogy covers
> > these three world-historical stages brilliantly.
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
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