P defends V. ...

[Mark Kohut]

Robin writes:
"I'm going to throw out a despicable theory—find a passive-voiced central figure 
in a Pynchon novel, look for echos of the author. Zoyd, Slothrop, Benny, Doc, 
Mucho Maas."

NOT despicable at all.....but a pattern-finding GRAND UNIFIED FIELD THEORY, so 
to allude...................

And when you write "echoes", you have not gone too far.......

From Shakespeare thru Joyce to T.S. Eliot---who famously said his poems had none 
of himself in them......(although at least one reader who knew him
said......The Wasteland is not about Modern Civilization.....it's about his 
marriage....).....the best readers try to find where in the text IS the author, 
if anywhere.......................


 


----- Original Message ----
From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Mon, August 30, 2010 11:17:42 AM
Subject: Re: P defends V. ...

On Aug 30, 2010, at 7:31 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Yikes, just plowed through way too many previously unread e-mails to discover 
>high levels of vituperativeness and threats and encouragements of leave-taking 
>from the group read.

Terri can come back any time he wants to.

Apparently Alice is dead.

> First of all, sorry, Joseph, I pushed the idea of an end-of-summer break 
>because it seemed voices were dwindling and some people had fallen behind and 
>needed catch-up time.

I needed it, thanks.

> Plus, the last week or so of summer has a tendency to lure people away from 
>their computers in favor of walks on the beach, the dropping off of one's 
>youngest at college (sob!), etc.  We start up on the 6th with Chapter 6.

Looks like my first post on that subject is simultaneously premature and 
redundant.

> Second, I hope no one will be driven from the read (or leave of their own 
>volition) by the degenerating tone of what started out as a discussion about P's 
>attitude towards V.  Personally, I tend to agree with Alice/Terrence's 
>preference of V over IV.  On the other hand, during the group read of IV, Robin 
>certainly helped me see it in a better light than I had during my first reading.

Please try to understand, I have been attempting to absorb "V." for FORTY years, 
I always felt that maybe I'm not smart enough to "get" "V." At least now I am 
understanding why it has been impossible for me to get into "that book," the 
very real possibility that the book is simply not engaging.

> I've always seen the SL Intro as an honest self-critique, with some 
>fishing-for-compliments motivation tossed in.  I disagree with P's disparagement 
>of COL49.  I love that book.  My daughter (20) just read it and also loved it.

I don't think I have a muddled misreading of the SL intro. I believe that the 
author, by his expressed deliberate confusion and ambivalence over CoL49, 
acknowledges that something happened:

    "this last story can be traced to ordinary nostalgia for this time
    in my life, for the writer who seemed then to be emerging, with
    his bad habits, dumb theories and occasional moments of
    productive silence in which he may have begun to get a
    glimpse of how it was done."

There's a few moments in CoL49 where the young author gives real glimpses of how 
it's done. During my last attempt at "V.", a few years ago, Mondaugen's Story 
gave me a few glimpses of how it's done. It's safe to say that Benny's 
re-emergence to the street strikes me as a fine example of how it's not done.

> It's got to be daunting for authors to lose control over their published work, 
>but that's the collateral damage of publishing.  Doris Lessing was incredibly 
>pissed off that readers loved The Golden Notebook for being a feminist tract, 
>something she had had no intention of writing.

I think Pynchon was pissed that he had come to the point where he needed to come 
up with quick writing for cash. Probably bruised his ego. At the same time, 
yes—the writer really does seem to be emerging,

I'm going to throw out a despicable theory—find a passive-voiced central figure 
in a Pynchon novel, look for echos of the author. Zoyd, Slothrop, Benny, Doc, 
Mucho Maas.

Somewhere in 1964, Young Tom really heard "She Loves You" for the first time. 
Musta been something in the water.

> I also like V, though there are many parts (specifically the Whole Sick Crew) 
>that I dislike.

Well, like Dixon said to Mason—"Amuse me."

> I like the audacity (Obama doesn't own that word)of the young author's 
>experiment, even if it partially, or even mostly failed.

For the most part, the use of language is crap. One of the reasons why I boiled 
over at Terri's slagging of Inherent Vice is that Pynchon's ear for the sounds 
of L.A. speak, improbably enough, is so accurate, so honed to the precise 
attributes of the creeping imbecility that was spreading like a fog upon L.A. 
It's true that a lot of the dialog was lifted from non-stop media outlets, 
echoed incessantly, but that's the point, isn't it? Whatever, the author has 
wonderful control over tone in his most recent novel, seems to have no control 
over tone in the first.

> Most of those reading the novel when it first came out must have wanted to hear 
>more from this voice.

I'm certain that in the context of 1963 it came out of left field.

In a way, JFK's assassination was the author's good-luck charm, much like for 
the Beatles. The timing was right, the American Left was ready for the great 
intellectual voice of vast paranoid systems and Pynchon provided those 
conspiratorial webs, even if he wasn't exactly on board with activities that 
might involve missing an episode of Gilligan's Island or two.

> The dialogue may have been weak, but there are still many fine classic Pynchon 
>passages sprinkled throughout the book.  It's certainly worth an archaeological 
>dig of a group read to find those treasures.  Hope we can all (all of us!) 
>reconvene on September 6th to continue the pursuit.
> 
> Laura

I'll be there, like it or not.