ATD: unanswered questions #2

[Mark Kohut]

About the famous, auto-blurb....I am going to suggest that it---world as it could be with just a slight shift---is ALSO about TRPs deepest vision of
'the ethical, the good, life".....

1st, third in the historical trilogy taking History on overtly from the end of the last century.....and maybe the whole History of the West since the Enlightenment....

AND, his vision of the Human, the good life....

Mark

--- On Sat, 9/20/08, bandwraith at aol.com <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:

> From: bandwraith at aol.com <bandwraith at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: ATD: unanswered questions #2
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, September 20, 2008, 9:33 AM
> Bekah:
> 
> "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."
> 
> 
> Wicks:
> 
> "Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,—Tops and
> Hoops,
> forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such
> idle
> Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to
> lawyers,—
> nor is Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People.
> History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one,
> as claim
> the Power of the other,—her Practitioners, to survive,
> must
> soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy and Taproom
> Wit,—
> that there may ever continue more than one life-line back
> into
> a Past we risk, each day, losing our forbears in
> forever,— not ano
> Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us
> All,—rather,
> a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak
> and strong,
> vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their
> Destination in 
> common." (p.349
> 
> 
> So, singling up all lines, like, you'll forgive me,
> Wallace
>  on
> a string- no matter how good the reason for taking the
> easy way out- might not be the wisest approach to
> understanding one's fate- separate or communal?
> 
> But aren't readers invited to "single up all
> lines" from line
> one? Something feels not quite right about that
> perspective.