CoL49 (6) Leery of What She Might Find

[John Bailey]

Do you mean is it better for the reader or the character(s) to Know or Not Know?

I think where COL49 deliberately makes Not Knowing its central
concern, the more recent works allow the reader to both know and not
know. The "what was the question again?" becomes more important.

"There is no mystery to it, he said.
The recruits blinked dully.
Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that
there is no mystery."
- Blood Meridian

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Dave Monroe<against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 8:42 PM, David Payne<dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Is there really anyone who thinks that Oed was put on? I'll bet that all readers either believe that she uncovered the truth, or they believe that the reader is not supposed to know.
>
> Trying to bat a little clean-up on the recent Lot 49 group read today,
> I don't want to be the guy to declare an end to it or whatever because
> (a) I didn't organize. coordinate and/or kick it off, (2) I took my
> not-so-precious time (not to mention all y'all rather more valuable
> commodity) getting anything "done" at all, and (III), these things
> never REALLY end, of course, so ...
>
> ... but this is essentially the question I asked in my "final"
> official post of the reading. and it's one one (or or more) could ask
> of any given Pynchon novel, substituting, say, in re: say, V., instead
> of the Tristero, u.s.w., et soforthiam.  Looks like it'll be The
> Golden Fang this time around,  Is it better to know, and/or Know, than
> not?  Let me know (and/or Know) ...
>
> And while maybe Pynchon has us asking the wrong questions, well, he
> sems to keep having us do so, and even if he's not worried about the
> answers, well, you know how we do...
>
> At any rate, me i'm not the Host of Hosts here, so I don't want to
> call last call here (even if we all know we'll continue to get served
> after ahours, regardless), but again, everybody, tahnks for
> putting/keeping this together, thanks for participating,thanks for
> having me ..
>
> I will reserve the right, of course, to come back to those names, plus
> to continue posting from the teaching anothology (for starters) ...
>