V--2nd how about that ending, eh?

[bandwraith at aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: braden.andrews <braden.andrews at gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 26, 2011 4:30 pm
Subject: V--2nd how about that ending, eh?


....the abruptly absolute night, momentum alone carrying them toward 
the edge of
Malta,
and the Mediterranean beyond."

Real Sound of Music, eh, he sez sarcastically. Thoughts?
                        ---------------------

M&M in V.?

He always has difficulty with endings, his first
novel no less than his last, but he opens well.
M&D is better, but still problematic. Lot 49, as
usual, is the perfect exception.

GR is about General Relativity (gravity) which
is beyond the scope of this post, except to
say that it also ends badly, perhaps on purpose.

V. is just a first installment of the larger body
of work, with multiple tendrils continuing against
the skein of any given day.

His whole project could be looked on as a
meditation on continuity and all that implies.
Mathematically this novel ends- reaches the
limits of its scope- in The Secret Integration.

V. is about differentiation, which the Maltese
children perform on the B.P. In the S.I., the
kids perform the reiprocal of differentiation.

They form a bridge for the imagination of the
readers, the loss of any one of them might
make the traverse impossible.

Children are of fundamental importance in
Pynchon as the receivers of the given- of history.
Whether they are used or abused is an open
question. Certainly they resist, but they carry
within themselves, each of them, their own
limitations, and remind me of us. It's why it's
better to have many lines back into the fog history
rather than a single line- for the sake of continuity,
and the preservation of our past.

Penny?