S/Z

[Ian Livingston]

Ah. Yes, I see there is considerable resonance in the metaphor on
those terms. Good one. Might apply to any of those moments in P. where
he leaves the character and the reader poised on the brink of some
epiphany that never becomes explicit. It is also, as I recollect when
I look back that far, resonant of a certain subjective response when a
person is particularly high, as in the case of tripping, e.g., where
one has the sensation of something really cool on the edge of
awareness, just out of reach. Truth? Beauty? Or just epiphanic
insight? Hm.

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 1:11 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking, think, the ending of The Crying of Lot 49 in
> particular, most any given Pynchon ovel in general, but ...
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Ian Livingston
> <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hm. Seems to me 'truth' is a tough nut to crack no matter how it is
>> revealed. Socrates' take was that truth and beauty coincide, but to
>> attempt to restrict either to verbal constructs is, at best, a
>> practice, or training, to prepare the psyche to recognize truth and
>> beauty upon encountering them. There are some who suggest that any
>> representation of experience is, at best, an educated guess and that
>> truth is therefore transient. My suspicion, as a sort of educated
>> guess, is that those who go seeking truth--whether in practice or
>> literature--tilt after windmills. In the hermeneutic of any dialog the
>> object in question seems more nearly a matter of resonance rather than
>> of truth, per se. We look for relative degrees of agreement.
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 7:38 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> From Roland Barthes, S/Z: An Essay (trans. Richard Miller, New York:
>>> Hill & Wang 1974 [1970]), Sec. XXXII,  "Delay":
>>>
>>> "Truth is brushed past, avoided, lost. This accident is a structural
>>> one. In fact, the hermeneutic code has a function, the one we (with
>>> Jakobson) attribute to the poetic code: just as rhyme (notably)
>>> structures the poem according to the expectation and desire for
>>> recurrence, so the hermeneutic terms structure the enigma according to
>>> the expectation and desire for its solution.  The dynamics of the text
>>> (since it implies a truth to be deciphered) is thus paradoxical: it is
>>> a static dynamics: the problem is to maintain the enigma in the
>>> initial void of its answer; whereas the sentences quicken the story's
>>> 'unfolding' amid cannot but help move the story along, the hermeneutic
>>> code performs an opposite action: it must set up delays (obstacles,
>>> stoppages, deviations) in the flow of the discourse; its structure is
>>> essentially reactive, since it opposes the ineluctable advance of
>>> language with an organized set of stoppages ... [...]  Expectation
>>> thus becomes becomes the basic condition for truth: truth, these
>>> narratives tell us, is what is at the end of expectation." (pp. 75-6)
>>>
>>> http://us.macmillan.com/Book.aspx?isbn=9780374521677
>>>
>>> http://books.google.com/books?id=XpqlCCG73YIC
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/Z
>>>
>>> http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10346
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Klaatu barada nikto
>>
>



-- 
Klaatu barada nikto