CH 15

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thanks, Joseph, for your greatly illuminating little essays on Chap. 15 and beyond.  I've read all your postings with interest and apologize for being too distracted to respond.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>Sent: Nov 23, 2009 12:42 PM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: CH 15
>
>Not the best hosting job on the Chapter.  I came in with an obscure  
>memory of the remainder of the book,  which I just read through a  
>couple days ago and saw several errors I had made. On the positive  
>side there was an element of the un"spoiled"  view of a first read.  
>On the negative side I was misreading Bjornsen's  authenticity in  
>divulging information as plausibly sincere. This is clearly the  
>intent of Bjornsen (who is as good an actor as Doc or Shasta)    
>towards  Doc  and of Pynchon for the reader. He is giving Bigfoot and  
>by proxy , whatever there might be of "good cops " room to show some  
>humanity and commitment to "liberty and  justice for all" .   In the  
>context of the book it is a little like deep throat, or John Meier's   
>report of what Hoover said about the RFK killing. It is a leak  that  
>acts as a confirming witness of murderous internal corruption . I  
>think the idea of the leak is hard to overstate in Pynchon. The  
>references leak into history and into our own times, as these leak  
>into the fictional world, the books leak into each other and  nothing  
>is hermetically sealed and there is no God to explain it, no  
>authorial intent that by any critical approach can be pinned down.
>
>I am writing this way because having read the book twice I am finding  
>the word pastiche inadequate. There is a level on which this is a  
>tightly plotted noir mystery along the lines of Chinatown, but with   
>broader political focus. (Crocker Fenway seems a direct nod to Noah  
>Cross) I think this layering of styles and forms that coexist and yet  
>hold up on their own levels is essential Pynchon. One could easily  
>argue that this is  a subtle and widely directed satire of addiction,  
>role-playing, fascism posing as freedom, consumerist counter-culture,  
>pornography and criminal insanity among other things. And  I find  
>that when I focus in on the specifics of a satiric inquiry it is  
>usually more substantive than it  at first seems. But is it satire or  
>comic book farce or is it is really a serious attempt to expose the  
>key corporate and political players in an historic fascist coup.   I  
>could go on here about the parallel worlds of the collective  
>unconscious and  the coming flood, but my question is whether the oft  
>used "pastiche", or "post-modern" may obscure as much as they reveal.  
>It is a pastiche but it is also fundamentally unlike other examples  
>of that mode of work.
>
>other levels  have to do with classic tensions that we find in P's  
>work: paranoia v reality , narrative v entropy, pursuit of justice v  
>delusions of purity and parallel worlds , the biosphere v industrial  
>technology. Many of these could be threeways instead of dualities and  
>I suppose one could get kinkier still, with as Gary Snyder said creek  
>music, heart music , the soil of Turtle Island and the beings who  
>thereon dwell , one ecosystem under the sun , with joyful  
>interpenetration for all.
>
>All of this is just my clever way of avoiding the fact that I really  
>don't have much or perhaps anything more to say about  Chapter 15.  
>Happy feasting for all those enjoying Thanksgiving, and happy rest,  
>reading and relaxing to all .
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