pynchon-l-digest V2 #7335

[Mark Kohut]

Alice writes:
"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."

Once again, a false generalization. I am using Booth, noir fiction conventions and old-fashioned [non-postmodern] meanings of parody and 
homage.

--- On Fri, 12/11/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #7335
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, December 11, 2009, 5:07 AM
> 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?
> >
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