VLVL(12) pgs 218-226

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

To avoid unnecessary spoiling, suffice it to say that the heroine of
the Flaubert story experiences the Holy Ghost as a parrot in a pivotal
passage. But what does THIS signify? It is tempting to think the story
satirizes religion, but there are also differing interpretations.

For Van Meter too, parrots bear transcendental possibilities. (I'm
reading the passage from the link Dave posted, as I don't have a copy
of VL handy.) But typically of Pynchon, transcendence is not reached.
(Molly Hite's Pynchon book contains a chapter on the topic.) OBA's
novels are often about religion and religious feelings, but they are
not religious - at least not transcendentally religious.

Oh: Van Meter's parrot is Luis - that is "Lou". In "A Simple Soul", the
parrot is Loulou.

Barnes' novel is a wonderful biographic-and-litcrit-rambling-as-a-novel
prompted by the somewhat McGuffinesque question: can one find the real
stuffed parrot that may have prompted Flaubert to write his story? (For
those who aren't familiar with GF's novels and stories, it might be wise
to read them before reading _FB_. Or read them anyway - they're great.)


Heikki

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Bekah wrote:

> Anyone read Julian Barnes'  Flaubert's Parrot?  Anyone read "A Simple
> Soul?  by Flaubert?
>
> But where is the "real" parrot - does it matter?
>
> Bekah
>
>
> On Feb 23, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
> > On Feb 23, 2009, at 1:06 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> >
> >> Is there a difference?
> >
> >
> > Good point.
> >
> > I like to think of Pynchon's use of parrots as a perfect sign, a
> > summing up of an esthetic and a literary movement in shorthand. But
> > I don't know enough about parrots and postmodernism to get all
> > deconstructive on your posterior, so I'm going to hunt down parrots
> > in Pynchon and see what pops up.
> >
> > Meanwhile, a quick and lazy search of Pynchon & signifiers yields:
> >
> > 	. . . the remarkably theory-saturated approaches of the 1990s
> > 	and early 2000s have, as McHoul and Wills explained, often
> > 	explicitly abandoned the idea of exegetically tracing (and
> > 	explaining) the "'actual,' 'underlying' rationale for Pynchon's
> > 	writing" . . .   . . . The preference, in this earlier mode of
> > Pynchon
> > 	criticism, was for drifting along with the author's own signs,
> > 	symptoms, and signifiers, allowing Pynchon's literature to be
> > 	"bookmatched" with Derridean (and other theorists')
> > 	assumptions in such a way that the demarcation between the
> > 	subject and method of analysis is deliberately blurred. Seminal
> > 	pre-texts for approaches of this kind were Leo Bersani's twenty-
> > 	year-old article on the prevalence of paranoia as an operative
> > 	system at work both within the fictional world(s) inside the novel
> > 	and at the level of reading it, or Brian McHale's observation that
> > 	in Pynchon's prose, ontological aspects tip over into
> > 	epistemological ones (and vice versa). Berressem had
> > 	subsequently picked up the deconstructivist ball and kicked it
> > 	further, adding a certain Lacanian spin, in 1993. More recently
> > 	Dana Medoro seems to be the critic who, while arguing with an
> > 	astounding rigor, has most refreshingly been inspired by the
> > 	textual trajectories offered in, for instance, The Crying of Lot 49.
> > 	At the same time, most of these readings were - or at least
> > 	appeared to me as if they were - acts of defiance that, like the
> > 	novelist himself, did not care too much about paying reverence
> > 	to the author. Instead they provided what partly looks like a
> > 	relaunch of New Criticism, with its focus on elucidating the story
> > 	and discourses of the texts, without contributing to the author's
> > 	(anyway unnecessary) canonization through a mixture of
> > 	pathos and curiosity. If Pynchon's is a prose that goes against
> > 	the grain, and if these critical examples likewise overtly or
> > 	covertly oppose the prevailing standards of literary studies, the
> > 	Munich conference saw astoundingly many scholars
> > 	backlashing and falling back into speculation about possible
> > 	sources (or intertextual connections) and biographical criticism.
> >
> >
> >
>
>