VLVL(12) pgs 239- 246

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The whole chapter, with its shifts in time and persepctive, seems like a Rashoman-like approximation of the truth.  Flashbacks, unlike memories, are supposed to be true:  we're being shown something that actually happened.  Hitchcock used this standard of truth to con the audience in the movie Stage Fright.  He starts the movie with a flashback that we assume to be true, but turns out not to be.  Pynchon gives us a conditional flashforward, a "could have been true," in the friendly chat between Weed and Rex.  Are all the flashbacks necessarily true? Maybe the flashback to Rex giving away his car to the revolutionaries from BAAD is meant as a variation of an urban legend, rather than reality.  

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: Feb 27, 2009 9:54 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: VLVL(12) pgs 239- 246
>
>
>On Feb 27, 2009, at 6:41 AM, Bekah wrote:
>
>> I can't recall any television shows which used the flashback/flash- 
>> forward a whole lot.
>
>I'm not pointing to the usual sitcoms/soap-operas/crime-dramas. I'm  
>referring to made for TV movies and mini-series, multi-generational  
>sagas that resort to flashbacks to sustain continuity. While "Titanic"  
>is one of those big-time Hollywood movies, the techniques in James  
>Cameron's film come to mind. Note as well current programs like  
>"Without a Trace" that juggle time to resolve a "mystery."
>
>Of course, "Citizen Kane" is the all-time champion of the technique.