IVIV Hope Harlingen: ( spoilers)

[Joseph Tracy]

On Sep 11, 2009, at 9:17 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> I suspect that one reason why some readers insist that these works
> have traditional characters or heroes and traditional scenes that
> readers can view as tender or heart warming is because some readers
> have, perhaps without knowing it, embraced the standard critical
> antipathy to these kinds of works, postmodern works, or in P's case
> postmodern romances /  satires. This because these readers distrust
> metafictional humor and comedy and/or refuse to acknowledge that the
> joke they cannot get is on them.
By a traditional character do you mean you and your heroic attempt to  
reveal the true meaning of Pynchonian, non-meaningful, postmodernism,  
and to thereby let us in on the joke that is on us, so we too can  
enjoy some good old fashioned non-laughter. I'll bet your students  
just love you and are delighted to be set straight about these  
brilliant insights.
> In Fables of Subversion, Steven Weisenburger discusses  Heller,
> Pynchon, Coover, John Hawkes and William Gaddis—as authors of
> “degenerative satire,” which is a postmodern satire; its comedy and
> humor are beyond the kind of corrective laughter typical of
> traditional literary satire and “subvert hierarchies of values and
> reflect suspiciously on all ways of making meaning, including its
> own.”

Hat's off to anyone who can continue reading after a few paragraphs  
of Weisenburger. Not my cup of tea.

In my experience most non-religious educated and thoughtful people  
"reflect suspiciously  on all ways of making meaning, including their  
own".  Whether Pynchon's humor is "beyond the kind of corrective  
laughter typical of traditional literary satire" I would argue is  
open for debate.  It seems to me that you would have Pynchon closing  
all doors and I see a writer who reflects the world in such a way as  
to leave all doors open including the validity of a grave sense of  
inevitable self destruction. To me this is the nature of  
consciousness; the ability to reflect means the future and the  
quality of our life experience is interactive, open, indeterminate.