TT 1.3 - "The Recognitions"

[Mark Kohut]

David focuses on something epistemologically different between Gaddis
and Pynchon as P writes on pattern recognition in GR.....as if P. went 'beyond' 
?--
or went where he thought the world now went compared to Gaddis? 

David and I have differed on his last sentence in the past but I---you?---
think he is right on about Pynchon's complexifying of the tenuous
question. 

For The Recognitions, Gaddis does seem to believe in "this pendant world"--
Goethe, I think---and massively satirizes it with a kind of realism on steroids? 


Jed's citation is another laugh within the book? An abbreviated shorthand--like
text messaging or tweeting!--for the mapping truth? The map is not the territory
but the territory is there whether anyone is in the forest or not......

----- Original Message ----
From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Jed Kelestron <jedkelestron at gmail.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, April 26, 2011 5:36:48 PM
Subject: Re: TT 1.3 - "The Recognitions"

Then Gaddis' intention is a rather doctrinaire one: insisting on a
reality, on patterns, that exist independent of an observer.  in GR
(and elsewhere) Pynchon goes into great depth exploring pattern
recognition as being, possibly, the paranoid invention of the
observer.  Reality is never confirmed nor denied.

David Morris

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Jed Kelestron <jedkelestron at gmail.com> wrote:
> [In his working notes for the novel Gaddis wrote: "The Recognitions as title I 
>like perfectly because it implies the impossibility of escape from a (the) 
>pattern"]
> ---------------------------------------
>
> The character Otto's character Gordon says, "Orignlty not inventn bt snse of 
>recall, recgntion, pttrns alrdy thr. q. You cannt invnt t shpe of a stone." This 
>is not the only way the word recognition is used in the text, but it is an 
>important one. Recognizing the underlying patterns, the archetypal substrate, 
>the Platonic ideals. Ties in with Aunt May's demonization of human creativity. 
>Reality is already there. It can't be created, only recognized.
>