Re: IVIV: chapter seven—Eel Trovatore

[Joseph Tracy]

On Sep 23, 2009, at 7:46 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:

> You're right.  I hadn't considered the waitress in light of the  
> unconscious with Leej and Vehi.  Or that eating a bad meal, or any  
> meal, was about internalizing and coping.
>

People eat weird stuff in dreams.  Jungians say it's about  
integrating the material represented in the symbolism/reference of  
the thing eaten. Every story is a kind of dream and in this chapter  
Larry is headed into a deep dreamstate, which is the nature of his  
hallucinogenic journey. This meal with Sauncho served by Chlorinda is  
the  prelude to that scene and contributes to setting it up along  
with the conversation  with Fritz about Shasta and in Wavos about  
Lemuria. The imagery is all about the deep blue see/a. Besides the  
devil ray fillet and the jellyfish teriyaki croqettes , there are  
other indications of bad shit in the ocean with the tar on the   
beaches and the Golden Fang's drops. It forms a picture of trouble,  
toxicity, lust and violence under the surface of the  suburbia, Beach  
Boys and Gilligans Island culture.    .  Note that over at wavos the  
surfers are not eating fish but are eating health waffles and  
vegetarian soup. Zucky's was a real deli and the food is somewhere in  
between.

To me the 3 restaurants are a refrain of a pattern I saw in ATD.   
Where the story has 3 main levels: 1) the real world and real people  
( Chicago world fair, Tesla, WW 1, Tunguska)which affect everything  
in the story . In IV the real  is Zuckys', the music, Vietnam, the  
arpanet, CIA, defense industries on the beach, level 2) relatively  
normal fictional characters and plausible if unlikely events and lives 
( Traverses, Yashmeen, Cyprian,) who live in he real world and  
interact with it and more rarely with mythofictional reality.  3)   
pure mythos ( The Chums, the time travelers , hollow earth, the  
northern beast, the under sand  device), the time lapse photography .  
In IV this mythical place is occupied more sparsely than ATD  
( Lemuria, Bermuda Triangle, Alien planets, along with silly shit   
like Gilligan's Island, but everything is infected with this stuff on  
some level.

In Jung , and obviously  this notion goes far beyond him, remembered   
dreams and art are a dimension between mythos and daily life, the  
conscious and unconscious. Nothing new there. But most writers try to  
occupy  the realistic descriptive,  or the plausible fictive with  
nuanced influence from the real and the mythic, or the imaginary  
mythic. But TRP fully activates reifies and juggles all 3. Nothing is  
diminished . Everything is treated with a kind democracy of  
consciousness.

Anyway that is what I see, and approaching Pynchon this way frees the  
reader from a sense of being taken in and manipulated.  If the  
symbolism, actions or references  don't cohere into a revelation it  
isn't because we are being had or don't get it . It is because the  
author is only human,  like many of us. Neither the whole nor any  
part  of the terrain explored can be fully and adequately represented  
in words, but by seeing and representing the layers without favor of  
one over the other.  the author invites an active and interactive  
metaliterary  reading, which , at least for this reader is still  
engaging and enjoyable.

A few nights ago I read The Road and it was gripping, visceral and  
spare prose of the highest order. But with all of McCarthy I am asked  
both to feel and believe a world. I can feel it but I can never  
believe it. With Pynchon I am not asked to believe, but to read  
skeptically, thoughtfully, amusedly. The wild diversity and  
intellectual passion  of critical response tells me, not that the  
"real meaning " is impenetrable, but that the reader is as important  
a component as the writer in the making of any worthwhile meaning.