The revolutionaries of May

[Dave Monroe]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 6:07 AM, Tore Rye Andersen<torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> John:
>
>> As I say, there's likely no more significance in these details than I am personally
>> finding in them, but then that's half the appeal of GR, some days anyway: on top of
>> the countless immensitoies which Pyhchon has deliberately sewn into the fabric, we
>> each of us have found our own resonances and meanings. Haven't we?
>
> Righto. In the words of the man himself:
>
> "But the Rocket has to be many tings, it must answer to a number of different shapes
> in the dreams of those who touch it - in combat, in tunnel, on paper [...]. Each will
> have his personal Rocket."

>From Deborah L. Madsen, "Pynchon's Quest Narratives and the Tradition
of American Romance," Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of
Lot 49 and Other Works, ed. Thomas H, Schaub (NY: MLA, 2008), pp.
25-30:

   "Pynchon;s style of writing is an aspect of this American quest for
meaning and merits comparison with Moby Dic.  The narrator, Ishmael,
discovers that every word, every sign he encounters generates a
plenitude of meanings that cannot necessarily be reconciled.... his
attempt to reach a complete definition of cetology is defeated by a
ciontinualn proliferation of details, which produce an infinite
complexity.  Ahab confronts the spiritual consequences of this
complexity:in particular the possibility that there is no transcendent
unity such as Emerson envisioned.  Ahab is compelled to his obsessive
quest for the white whale both by the suspicion that in the place of
plenitude there is an ultimate absence at the heart of things and by
fear of its discovery." (p. 28)

http://www.mla.org/store/CID23/PID336