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

[jochen stremmel]

»He always has difficulty with endings, his first
novel no less than his last«

what do you mean, the last. I think the ending of IV is one of the
most bijoutiful endings — novel endings I mean — of the last 100
years.

J

2011/2/27  <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?
>
>
>