pynchon-l-digest V2 #7335

[alice wellintown]

It's important to agree to the kind before one can discuss degrees.
The kind is Unreliable. The degree of unreliablity and the compexity
of the epistemological and ontological elements and how these dovetail
with the narratives and narrators can proceeed once we agree that the
test narratives are unreliable. That's step one. If we refuse this
step, we can not proceed in the discussion. But this is typical of
P-Land, where any attempt to agree to terms or use the standard
critical terminology is met with hostility because the author is
viewed as so unique as to defy all attempts to define his genius and
works. Pynchon has his own style, but his works are are fictions and
we can recognize them as such. They have all the traditional elements
of what we call novels. One of these, and these elements are like
parts of a car in that they may be taken out and examined and analyzed
 but function together to make the car run and move, is narrator. To
argue that the narrator or the unreliablity of narrators in a work,
such as GR is besides the point is to prevent analysis of the text.
How else but by taking it apart, engine and tansmission and wheels,
can we analyze it? We can't. To argue that the engine and
trnasmisssion are so connected, as the worlds and the minds and the
characters and the narrators are in GR, that they can not be analyzed
is very useful.

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> John Bailey:
>
>> I draw a distinction between P's novels which do relentlessly track a
>> leading character - Oedipa, Doc - or two - Benny & Stencil, Mason &
>> Dixon - and the kaleidescopic narratives of GR, VL and AtD. I agree
>> that perhaps the authorial voice in these does align itself with
>> particular characters at many points, but I reckon that overstates
>> things. In fact, in M&D and AtD the authorial voice is more of an
>> hilarious 'character' than the ostensible subjects it narrates. In M&D
>> this voice might be attributable to Rev. Cherrycoke but it wanders off
>> a fair bit. I still maintain that AtD's 'voice' is very much concerned
>> with genres, their imitation and their about-with-messing.
>
> Good stuff! I absolutely agree that it's important to distinguish between
> P's novels when it comes to narrators. M&D seems a bit more complex than
> AtD in that regard, since there is, as you point out, more than one narrator
> (Cherrycoke is the narrator who steals the most of the spotlight, but
> occasionally we visit the frame-narrative, where someone narrates Cherrycoke
> narrating - and what the f*** happens when The Ghastly Fop and Cherrycoke's
> narrative bleed into each other in chapters 53 and 54!? Dodgy stuff.)
>
>> Re-reading AtD at the moment, I was struck by what must be P's only
>> deployment of the first person in fiction - the Chums of Chance author
>> suddenly mentions letters he's (?) received from regular readers.
>
> There are a couple of instances in GR as well where the narrator - or at
> least what seems to be some aspect of the narrator - points to himself.
> There is the passage on pages 738-39, for instance, where an "I" suddenly
> surfaces within brackets. Also, on p. 738 the narrator speaks of Slothrop's
> "chroniclers" (which would include, one supposes, himself) and of the
> lousy Tarot card which fate has dealt him. And on page 755, the narrator
> once again invokes himself as "your correspondent" - which would just
> seem to be a fancy way of saying "I". So the narrator does seem to pop up
> from time to time in GR, although not as clearly as in AtD. B-but who exactly
> is it that flirts "away in the mirrorframe in something green-striped,
> pantalooned, and ruffled" on p. 122?
> _________________________________________________________________
> Windows Live Hotmail: Your friends can get your Facebook updates, right from Hotmail®.
> http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-it-in-action/social-network-basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_4:092009