IV

[alice wellintown]

The text is not a Rorschach; blots or black dots on white paper, open
to any and all readings. There are limits and it certainly helps if
the reader has a teacher who points out what they are. Too much
reader-response and sub-textual or outside of the text reading and
we're not really communicating about a shared experience of art. There
are stupid readings. There are wrong ones too. The political readings
that dig into what is not in the text but only pointed to or hinted at
or not said but implied is just not a good way to go about reading any
book. For example, the JFK reading of the CL49 goes to such
extraordinary lengths to argue that P never mentions the assassination
in the text because he wants the reader to understand that what is not
said is what is most important. Wha? Why? Is Pynchon a novelist or
some mole in the CIA circa 1964? The reading that the group here is
engaged in has taken to connecting dots and inkblots, constructing a
Rorschach reading that, again, condemns the CIA. That P's novels
comment on the events that impact his readers, like the Bush Chaney
abuse of power should surprise no reader of current events or current
fictions. That his novels are some deep and cryptic commentary on the
CIA is absurd, counterproductive; such readings are satirized by the
texts.