Ch 11 p163 - petite postcard

[Rob Jackson]

On 26/10/2009, at 4:03 AM, Clement wrote:

> I'll add something about "you'd call diagnostically" (169): we have
> the same direct address to the reader p.167, only more paranoid:
> "Fish, what Doc guessed you'd call tropical."

It's "what Doc guessed", so it's Doc using the colloquial second  
person, denoting something along the lines of "people in general".  
It's a common informal usage in American English.

I don't think there are any of the same sorts of direct address to the  
reader in IV as in GR.

Seems to me that all three of Pynchon's California novels have been  
tossed off quickly by the author, most probably as cash cows. Less  
research involved I guess.

While this one, from the reviews, seems that it might have been geared  
to and gained a broader audience than P's usual readership, and  
perhaps it did end up selling a few more copies at the register, it's  
such a shame that the most recent two of P's novels have been such dogs.

Thanks for your notes Clement.

all the best


> And some not too recent bibliography on the matter:
> Duyfhuizen, Bernard, "A Suspension Forever at the Hinge of Doubt":
> The Reader-trap of Bianca in Gravity's Rainbow, Postmodern Culture -
> Vol. 2, Nr. 1, September 1991.
> http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/postmodern_culture/
> v002/2.1duyfhuizen.html
> McHale, Brian, Ch. 4 “You used to know what these words mean”:
> misreading Gravity’s Rainbow (1985), in Constructing Postmodernism,
> Londres-New York, Routledge, 1992.
> on Google Books, but also here:
> http://carti.x6.ro/cartea/m/Mchale,%20Brian/Constructing%
> 20Postmodernism.doc
> Levine, Michael L. "The Vagueness of Difference: You, the Reader and
> the Dream of Gravity's Rainbow." Pynchon Notes 44–45 (1999): 117–31.
> Levines writes about the "unresolvable ambiguity" of the pronoun
> "you" in GR and adds many interesting analyses