Parochial Plea

[alice wellintown]

>
> Anyway, my broader point is that it's interesting how a writer with
> such a fascination for the idea of "North" - evident in most of his
> books as a thick, sometimes monstrous constellation of meanings -
> hasn't really employed a similar idea of "South", which is itself
> pretty common in a lot of other literature. M&D does head this way
> with the scenes in South Africa, and there are hints in the Herero
> sequences of V. and GR. But overall, there are very few trips south of
> the equator in all of P's writing.

Well, an American certainly, but a writer who, with his very first
novel goes after the world. His are Big books that take on lots of
lands. South America, while not as important as North America is
certainly a part of the landscape. Places like Malta and Islands
between Brasil and Africa ...Egypt ...Japan . . .TV-Land . . .P's
fictions are, as all American Literature is, Modern, Recent, and
International if not Multinational or Global. The crossing of lines
equatorial is quite common and important too. Can't be certain . .
.Monroe did draw quite a few brilliant lines betwixt Poe and Pynchon
and the North...think the same could be done with Melville and the
South (crossing the equator). Ahab/Blicero and Mondaugan and such.

There are certainly disadvantages but also advantages to reading P or
any other American from a non-American position. But, I have a soft
spot for strong mis(s)-readings (Harold Bloom). Melville misread
Hawthorne and was inspired by his misreading to write Moby-Dick. We
could say that Melville misread Shakespeare and most everything he
read for that matter, but his misreadings were so strong, so Melville,
and that made all the difference.

Bloom attempted to trace the psychological process by which a poet
broke free from his precursors to achieve his own poetic vision. He
drew a sharp distinction between "strong poets" who perform "strong
misreadings" of their precursors, and "weak poets" who simply repeat
the ideas of their precursors as though following a kind of doctrine.
He described this process in terms of a sequence of "revisionary
ratios," through which each strong poet passes in the course of his
career. A Map of Misreading picked up where The Anxiety of Influence
left off, making several adjustments to Bloom's system of revisionary
ratios. (Wiki)