afterthought per Ray and Richard

[Carvill, John]

Well Monte, I didn't mean those as 'scare quotes'. Don't be so sensitive!

<< Moving right along: what Ray Easton said and what I seconded was that "the
author is completely AWARE of how deeply confused his characters are." >>

Right, and I wondered, semi-seriously, how an author could fail to be aware of the extent of his fictional creations' confusion. I'm still wondering.

<< The jump to "the author is SATIRIZING [them]" is yours, not ours. >>

Nope. Not my jump at all. Go back and read the archive if you don't believe me.

<< I am frequently AWARE of confusion on the part of my pets, my children, my
colleagues, my significant others, and myself. For me, such awareness is as
compatible with bemusement, sympathy, empathy, compassion, love and many
other psychological states as it is with satiric detachment. Your mileage
may differ (he added Swiftly).     >>

Interesting. Not sure how it's relevant.

<< For me the supple variety and un-locatablity or un-ascribabilty of the voice
I "hear" from the page, especially in GR, is virtually diagnostic of
Pynchon's genius. >>

Surely you could have found a more pompous way to word that?

<< The voice skips in and out of [implied] points of view,
attitudes, and emotional states from sentence to sentence and scene to scene
like no other voice I know. >

True.

<< Every time I glimpse the man behind the curtain,
there's another curtain behind him. >>

If the curtain's *behind* him, that's fine.


<< I would sooner expect to find a snowball
at the center of the sun than an "explicit authorial statement" in Pynchon. >>

Hmmmm. What about when he tells us to 'check out' Ishmael Reed? Just one example.

<< Does anyone really think it's happenstance or idiosyncrasy that the creator
of that voice is so private a man? Does anyone really believe that when the
unauthorized biographies appear, when assiduous reconstruction tells us what
his Boeing performance reviews said and where he bought burritos in
Manhattan Beach and how he met Melanie Jackson, any of it will be more than
Jules Siegel on carefully trimmed toast points? >>

Again, not sure how this fits. As a general question, I still don't get it, sorry. Guess I don't hang out with enough Nobel laureates eh? Are you suggesting that there is nothing of interest to be known about Pynchon the person?

Cheers
J