Editing Pynchon?

[Ian Livingston]

Editing comes after revision. Revision in prose fiction often involves
major re-structuring. Editing does not.

I agree.  It was my impression we were talking about editing here, not revision.

I am not prepared to go into a lengthy discussion about Jung, and it
sounds like you're already hip to that, so I'll let that go and agree
with you again on the Webb - Lake - boy-at-the-rink triad.  My point
is that the illustration Pynchon offers is significant both in the
novel and in our culture at this time.  The novel would be less
without it, as it would be less without the Webb - Lake -
boy-at-the-rink triad.


On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 5:43 PM, alice
wellintown<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Ian. I think the painting example is only making matters worse.
> Editing comes after revision. Revision in prose fiction often involves
> major re-structuring. Editing does not.
>
> In any event, my question is, who are the King and the Son?
>
> Many P characters, and Lake is one such, have a conflict with their
> Father. Lake's oldman goes crazy after she meets a boy at the ice
> rink. The boy is an owner's son. Lake sees that Dad puts his love for
> his work-family (his Union, Local 63, Telluride) above his daughter's
> happiness, or at least her potential to be happy and free, sexually
> free, and independent, free to love whomever she chooses to love.
> This, it seems to me, is a powerful Pynchon theme. The natural or
> un-natural product of these constant family feuds (Mark Twain) is
> played out in the pornographic scene where Lake's power over
> Life/Death is manifest, made Death and Life in Lake.
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 6:15 PM, Ian Livingston<igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> One of the reasons I find structuralist approaches to literature
>> unsatisfactory -- as I do most exclusive approaches -- is that it
>> inclines the reader to limit his view of the work to only what can be
>> talked about in the language of structuralism.  A work of fiction is a
>> work of art, formed in the mind of a complex, dynamic individual
>> working within a complex, dynamic culture.  The resulting reductions
>> of the work in question beyond what the author has already managed
>> tend to mangle what does not fit into the frame of reference of
>> structuralist perspective.  Much of Pynchon's work, especially the big
>> 3 (GR, M&D and AtD) works on too many levels to be reduced to
>> structuralist approaches.  Sure, you can throw out what doesn't fit a
>> specific interpretation, but what remains is not the novel the author
>> wrote.  It is something else.  Certainly exclusion is necessary for us
>> as mortal, finite humans and all.  That is certainly true of how we
>> interpret the world we inhabit, and it also applies to how we read,
>> but that does not indicate that exclusion of any particular sort can
>> claim autocracy over other interpretive approaches.
>>
>> What many people find objectionable in Pynchon's sexual imagery
>> becomes quite interesting when we look at it in terms of its
>> illustration of certain archetypal images deeply entrenched in the
>> Western traditions.  For instance, when Lake steps aside from between
>> Deuce and Sloat, she leaves the King and Son of a shadow variety in
>> direct confrontation, which is an intolerable position for both.  That
>> metaphor has many allusive potentials that a reader can reflect on
>> through the course of the work as triads form and decay.  It is,
>> however, only one of the many colorful threads at work in the
>> tapestry.  Pulling any of the threads may not cause the fabric to
>> unravel, but it detracts from brilliance of the whole.
>>
>> When church representatives hired hack painters to come in and paint
>> coverings over some of Michelangelo's nude figures, they did not
>> destroy the paintings, they just made them other than what M. had
>> intended them to be.  They effectively created in the paintings a
>> sense of shame the artist did not recognize.  If some critic decides
>> that certain elements ought not to be included in a great work and
>> causes those elements to be changed, what has that critic done for
>> art?
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 3:43 PM, alice
>> wellintown<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Check out what Freud says about Michelangelo's Moses. There are not
>>> set pieces in the chapel. Pynchon's novels are full of set pieces.
>>> Now, set pieces make the works wonderful. They can also make a work
>>> long and tedious, tiresome, terrible. Can we take some set pieces out
>>> of atd? What would happen to the structure? Well, we would need to
>>> establish that there is a structure and then, and only then, argue if
>>> removing a set piece would violate the building code or blue print
>>> or/and other structural concerns. Of course, one could argue that the
>>> set piece is needed for other reasons. Then we could argue those.
>>>
>>> I've been teaching some works for over 11 years now. I read these
>>> works over and over again and again. Since I stop teaching in the
>>> university, where I taught labor and literature, and started teaching
>>> in top rated national
>>>
>>
>
>