IVIV20: Gateway to the past, 351-352

[Mark Kohut]

What lovely associations, Mike.....

I think we do get one layer of meaning for 'inherent vice' here....I just
don't know what it is............

--- On Wed, 1/13/10, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV20: Gateway to the past, 351-352
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 5:47 PM
> Paul Nightingale wrote:
> > As Ch20's first paragraph ends the narrative segues
> into a discussion of
> > "what Sauncho's colleagues in marine insurance liked
> to call inherent vice"
> > (351). Temptation, indeed: that the novel's title is
> being explained finally
> > is easily swallowed.
> >
> 
> well, at least it gives a body pause, seeing the title in
> the text...
> 
> > However, before taking the bait, we might consider the
> context and
> > acknowledge the failure of interpretation
> 
> hearkening back to Susan Sontag's essay "Against
> Interpretation"
> (which it's quite possible you're alluding to here,
> anyway)
> which might be apropos here - "instead of a hermeneutics,
> we
> need an erotics of art"
> 
> That book was on my parents' bookshelf back in the day,
> but
> I never cracked it.  However, the Wikipedia summary
> indicates
> that it may be a statement of something I've been groping
> at myself:
> rather than trying to piece together how a story points to
> something
> else, instead trying to have reasonable, edifying and
> enjoyable reactions
> to the story itself...
> 
> although, using Doc's attention to the blown-up pictures as
> a case in point,
> it's fairly easy to generalize about the nature of
> attention itself -
> forest/trees, map/territory, type of thing
> 
> This passage made me think of page 42, where
> Doc's said he'd like a warehouse to keep all the photos
> he'd like
>  to take, "one for every minute"
> 
> so Hope - responding to what may seem to her like
> an inherent instability in Doc revealed by that desire -
> asks him if he's seeing a therapist,
> and in one of the non-sequiturs that abound, he mentions
> that
> he's seeing a deputy DA...
> 
> and instead of clarifying her original question, she
> responds to
> his non-sequitur answer with relationship advice: "Even if
> you
> don't know what you've got...act sometimes like you
> do.  She'll
> appreciate that, and even you'll be better for it."
> 
> which sort of blends the hermeneutics and the erotics
> nicely
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> - "Releasing all we can, protecting what we must" - slogan
> of the
> National Declassification Center
>