ATD: unanswered questions #2

[Bekah]

On Sep 17, 2008, at 5:04 AM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
Me:
> "I think it's not so much an adjustment of history itself (as event)
> as it is an adjustment of how we perceive and construct our
> historical narrative - the book observes events "from above" and
> through a more revisionist, anarchist, revolutionary, lens."
Bandwraith:

> Good Golly! At the risk of being labelled "teacher's pet," I
> must say, that rings true. But I need some special attention:
> more specifics, please!
*******************

Back to the blurb:

" If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor  
adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main  
purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware.  
Good luck."

So I guess it doesn't say  "what history might be, " but rather,  
"what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two."   Read the  
correct way,  it speaks to the "almost as if" realism which lies  
close to the surface and then breaks.

Nevertheless,  my point, misreading the blurb to look at "history  
with a minor adjustment",  was generally the same one Hayden White  
made a few decades ago about historical narrative being bound  
linguistically (metaphorically)  to contemporary tropes.  (He's not  
talking actual historical event,   just the *narrative* of history  
which is made of  words which are bound to their own times and  
necessarily metaphorical.  Furthermore,  that writing affects future  
narratives.  This is  an horrendous over-simplification  - if you're  
interested see (in ascending order of difficulty - but not to the  
hardest): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White  or  -
http://tinyurl.com/4db5hv
or
"Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the History / Literature  
Debate"  by Kuisma Korhonen
http://tinyurl.com/5xeyk9
("Historical Discourse and Literary Writing" by Hayden White - pages  
25 - 35 -  there are  a couple pages missing but you can get the drift)


Against the Day is about the pre-modern (pre-WWI) era but told  
through post-modern (our) tropes.  All narrative history is bound  
this way of course, but in AtD  it was used deliberately and with  
dramatic effect.

Iow,  the story is basically a fictionalized  history  but told with  
a modern sensibility - almost the same tone J.G. Farrell used in The  
Siege of Krishnapur  where Farrell explored the antics of a fictional  
English community in colonial India through a 1970s morality /  
mentality.  This is not the same as writing about a given  period  
honoring the morality of the times at all - in fact,  it's very, very  
different.   But where Farrell's work was totally ironic - Pynchon  
seems to be working with a little tiny bit of very serious 21st  
century moralism within the irony.  Imo,  he uses our understanding  
of history to project a pre-modern world. "Our" understanding of  
history according to Howard Zinn, if you will.  (The 20th Century: A  
People's History by Howard Zinn  - "With all its limitations, it is a  
history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's  
movements of resistance."  - )

  This is not the traditionalist David Hackett Fischer,  yet a  
certain sense of providence is there.  And it's certainly not  John  
Lukacs - shoot,  it's not even Eric Hobsbawm (Marxist).    The  
history (as event) may be essentially the same,  only the  
perspective, using full editorial and literary options,  has  
influenced the narrative.  (heh)

That said,  "it seems as though" many sentences included phrases like  
"almost as if," indicating, acknowledging,  some kind of minor  
alteration somewhere - but perhaps it was the light - the time of day?

I think because OBA was writing a lot of meta-historical meta-fiction  
rather than  straight historical fiction like Mason & Dixon  -  
(magical chapters excepted)  he had to skip the clear view of a  
couple protagonists (M&D)  in favor of a multi-character approach -  
there are lots and lots of characters in history.     In GR the focus  
was on individual  response(s) to history.   V. , Vineland  and  The  
Crying of Lot 49 were more like portraits of the times viewed within  
the times.  Against the Day is fictionalized history viewed from our  
own ethical times.

The science in AtD is presented as the people in those times thought  
of it - kind of magical to them what with all they, in all their  
ignorance, had discovered.  Who knew what the future held?   (We do -  
the reader over here in the 21st century.)   The politics are  
presented as the people of that day thought of it - good vs evil,  
anarchy vs democracy.    The overarching (if I may use the term)   
morality of it all is presented in our own underlying POV -  the  
ultimate bi-location, perhaps?    But who knows,  our cultural POV  
may be that of the Chums - going from some kind of  benevolent  
totalitarianism to a more or less democratic/capitalistic  
(anarchist?)/ domestic (?) paradigm.   (We grew up,  ventured around  
geographically and sexually,  got jobs,  got married,  bought a  
house, had kids, got divorced,  and watched moving pictures.)   Where  
are the boundaries when you're talking metafiction/meta-history?

As to the phrase in my post about  "top down,"  Howard Zinn's  
historiography is sometimes called  history from the "bottom up."  I  
suppose that could be provided by the Nunatak thing dragged up in  
Iceland (?) but I'd rather think that  TRP  turned the idea upside  
down and from the vantage of a sky-craft (or the 21st century)   
viewed history "from above"  - far above - in the here and now.

Bekah
  babbling