afterthought per Ray and Richard

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carvill, John" <john.carvill at sap.com>
To: "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net>; "'Ray Easton'" 
<kraimie at kraimie.net>; "'pynchon -l'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 11:11 AM
Subject: RE: afterthought per Ray and Richard


>> I have no reason to believe our author himself makes this category
mistake.  Quite the contrary, it seems to me that the author is
completely aware of how deeply confused his characters are.

> Bingo. For me, the same is true for most (not quite all) of his 
> characters'
conspiracy theorizing and occultism, too.

Bongo. Leaving aside the question of what exactly would have to be going on 
in order for pynchon *not* to be aware of how much (or whether) his 
characters were confused, this seems to me to be pretty much the opposite of 
what I take away from, say, Gravity's Rainbow. The 'reading' of pynchon 
which sees all his portrayals of conspiracies as merely aimed at satirizing 
those who would subscribe to conspiracy theories, is one I find hard to 
square with the feeling I get from pynchon's books. Such a reading would, 
for example, have to encompass the claim that when we're told, in GR, that 
the war was really just a 'celebration of markets' - a line which seems to 
be one of those times when the general mood of the book is coalesced for a 
moment in an explicit authorial statement - then we're really meant to just 
have a quiet giggle at the sort of fluffy-headed 'conspiracy theorist' who 
would be apt to take that sort of thing seriously.



A statement needn't be literally true in order to contain in it a serious 
truth.

Just as fiction can be more true than mere fact.

Giggles would not be appropriate.

P