Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?

[alice wellintown]

I might find this argument more convincing if examples from the text
were provided to support it.


In V., GR, M&D, and AGTD, the author explicitly tussles with
narratorial authority. This is to be expected since it is a key
element of the American Romance. I can provide several much discussed
examples from each of these texts. But can anyone provide an example
of this in IV? It doesn't happen. The readers who are suggesting that
we read this work as a self-conscious reflection of the author's life
as a writer living in the world of IV and composing his masterworks
simply have not provided anything other than biographical fragments
and mappings. When does the author, as he does so often in his large
romances, tussle with narratorial authority? The argument that has
been advanced is flawed because it insists that the author's tone,
even his self-conscious tone (that is, the author's attitude) can be
discerned in a reliable narrative or effaced narrative voice in the
text. The flaw conflates the narrative with the author and compounds
this error with the biographical and mapping support and these are all
hung on the very sketchy claim about the author's supposed authorial
obsession with the CIA.

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Funny, I thought the core topic of the book was the attempt to remember what
> life was like at Manhattan—excuse me—Gordita Beach, way back in 1970. I
> detect the author having a lot of fun tussling with narratorial authority,
> always leading to thoughts like "It's a wonder I can remember anything at
> all." Lots of quotidian 1970 Los Angeles at the core of this remembrance of
> things past Rosecrans, with all sorts of cannabis flavored madeleines and
> other stoned diversions scattered along the way, leading to the usual
> cul-de-sacs and red herrings we all have learned to love so much over here
> at the P-list. This is a glimpse into those things that the author is most
> familiar with, shit he didn't have to look up, encapsulating the time and
> place the author lived in during the time he wrote the book that made him
> famous. In the process we are given additional contexts in which to read
> Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49, not to mention the Noir-laden
> Against the Day.
>
> On Jan 5, 2010, at 8:28 AM, Robert Mahnke wrote:
>
>> Hey Jill,
>>
>> Could you say more about what you mean by your first sentence?
>>
>> RPM
>
>> On 1/4/10, grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
>
>
>> OK, what I find so disappointing in IV is the lack of deep artful writing
>> about the core topic of the book, which I presume to be a revolutionary
>> act
>> of reversing the flow of money. It's been a topic before, reversals or
>> potentials of reversal-- from wistful missed opportunities of Tesla's free
>> energy, reversal of time in photography, etc, and IV coulda been a
>> contender.. but it aint. What I did like about IV was the story of
>> Sportello's and Bjornsen's professional paths beginning at conflicting
>> outlooks on the world, and then how by the end there's Sportello kind of
>> being exposed, willingly? by Bjornsen, in a good wake up and smell the
>> coffee kind of way, to dangers that whether we agree or not, whether we
>> like it or not, bring about a concretization that the 60's or the old
>> ways,
>> are over.
>>
>> Jill
>>
>> Original Message:
>> -----------------
>> From: Mark Kohut markekohut at yahoo.com
>> Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 14:23:13 -0800 (PST)
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Someone (else) speak on Inherent Vice..?
>
>