IVIV20: Gateway to the past, 351-352

[alice wellintown]

I'll wait to see what Hite and others have to say, but as I read the
novel looking for the substrative feminist themes and themes
pertaining to work and labor because I did a very close reading of VL
and discovered that the feminist themes, while often overt and part of
the surface text, were deeper in the inter-textuals, that is, the
films, the actors in the films, the biographies of the actors ....and
in IV it is also in the films but specifically in the films made from
books and the TV films made from films and books and biographies and
the like. I'm convinced of it but I don't have the time to research it
now. IV follows and fits in between the geographical and historical
contexts (1984 and 1969) of VL. Of course, feminism, and specifically
Lesbian Feminism, a major theme in IV, fits the geographical and
historical context.

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 3:41 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Maybe for guys, but for women, I think COL49 retains its status as the gateway drug to Pynchon.  No matter how much "Alice" calls IV Pynchon's "most feminist work," it simply isn't.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>
>>
>> I don't think the book can handle such weighty things or add all that
>>much insight to Pynchon's other works since its focus is surface.
>>However, I think IV would be a great book for readers new to Pynchon
>>to start. Do you find it strange Pynchon would write an primer to his
>>work at the end of his career?  Maybe it isn't so strange
>>
>>This is my list of books to be read order wise
>>
>>IV
>>Vineland
>>Lot 49
>>V
>>GR
>>M&D
>>ATD
>>
>>rich
>>
>>On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 1:10 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Well, whatever meanings, as we know from Pynchon's work, resonate beyond
>>> the symptomatic, it does seem to me that California as "the ark'--as Cailifornia goes, so goes the nation (in his work), so to speak---is one
>>> layer of meaning. The Golden Fang boat is how America was 'saved', he says with the deepest irony....
>>>
>>>
>>> --- On Thu, 1/14/10, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>>>> Subject: Re: IVIV20: Gateway to the past, 351-352
>>>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>>> Date: Thursday, January 14, 2010, 2:07 PM
>>>> From Mike:
>>>>
>>>> <<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">>
>>>>
>>>> I wasn't in particular, but you might consider the
>>>> following online extract
>>>> from Sontag's essay:
>>>>
>>>> The old style of interpretation was insistent, but
>>>> respectful; it erected
>>>> another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style
>>>> of
>>>> interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it
>>>> digs "behind"
>>>> the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one. The
>>>> most celebrated and
>>>> influential modern doctrines, those of Marx and Freud,
>>>> actually amount to
>>>> elaborate systems of hermeneutics, aggressive and impious
>>>> theories of
>>>> interpretation. All observable phenomena are bracketed, in
>>>> Freud's phrase,
>>>> as manifest content. This manifest content must be probed
>>>> and pushed aside
>>>> to find the true meaning -- the latent content -- beneath.
>>>> For Marx, social
>>>> events like revolutions and wars; for Freud, the events of
>>>> individual lives
>>>> (like neurotic symptoms and slips of the tongue) as well as
>>>> texts (like a
>>>> dream or a work of art) -- all are treated as occasions for
>>>> interpretation.
>>>> According to Marx and Freud, these events only seem to be
>>>> intelligible.
>>>> Actually, they have no meaning without interpretation. To
>>>> understand is to
>>>> interpret. And to interpret is to restate the phenomenon,
>>>> in effect to find
>>>> an equivalent for it.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/againstInterpExcerpt.shtml
>>>>
>>>> And back, a return to, my original post:
>>>>
>>>> However, before taking the bait, we might consider the
>>>> context and
>>>> acknowledge the failure of interpretation: the "glittering
>>>> mosaic of doubt"
>>>> is "[s]omething like ... inherent vice", and then "like
>>>> original sin", or
>>>> even "[l]ike the San Andreas Fault". A few lines further
>>>> Sauncho's "boat"
>>>> has become Doc's "ark", which is how, over the page on 352,
>>>> Doc describes
>>>> California itself. Meaning is always elsewhere, and this
>>>> explanation of the
>>>> novel's title provides little satisfaction if intended to
>>>> provide closure.
>>>>
>>>> Against modernist interpretation? Allon White's The Uses of
>>>> Obscurity has
>>>> long been a text I admired: he discusses the way in which
>>>> modernist writers
>>>> like James tried to resist what White calls "symptomatic
>>>> reading".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>