The precultural paradigm of expression in the works of Pynchon

[alice wellintown]

Literary theory, Literary Criticism, Literary Analysis, Critical
Theory and the like all pose important questions: what distinguishes
literature from other forms of communication? What is the nature of
poetic expression? What are the standards by which we may judge
literary works? How is Pynchon's work related to American Law? How
does Pynchon's latest novel (if that's what IV is and I have my doubts
about this ...) mean? What does the title of Inherent Vice mean? These
are all excellent questions and literary approaches listed and a few
others all help to pose these questions and answer them. Some schools
seem caught in language games that only  connoisseurs of jargon or
shop-talk grimace at and ingest nonetheless. But only fools refuse to
make meaning clear to those they wish to communicate with. Perhaps
this is why rhetoric and grammar are back in the curriculum. One
P-lister will complain that I will not make myself plane. One will
prick at my puritan style. Please yourself. Puritans are plane. Style
is the gold that connot stay more than hour when the leaf defolds the
flower.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

	-- Robert Frost


william h. gass's essay, "The Vicissitudes of the Avant-Garde" is
worth reading. You may find excerpts online and the essay in _finding
a form_.