the bruited cambridge companion to pynchon

[alice wellintown]

Yes, Hume is one of the critics I would place in that sector of the
P-Industry that manufactures, in her case a metaphysical product, a
Pynchon that few will consume or even see the value in, though it is,
an invaluable item when on has taken in the aggregate. The notion that
P is serious about Being, or questions about Being, is kinda silly,
but the use of ontology here can be married to questions of
epistemology and to meaning. This, as Tanner has noted, with his focus
on the subjunctive, the might have been, the if, and so on, is fairly
significant in P because those who claim ontological and
epistemological certitude, while denying it to others, rub out, erase,
often by naming and writing, by meaning. But what is and what can be
known, in P, is, through his romantic use of irony, and other
romantic, call them postmodernist or whatever, but nothing all that
post Melville, technics, made uncertain and infused with subjunctive
narratives of what may have beenm is, and may yet be.


> With view on some of the more recent p-list-debates I'd like to quote the
> following from Kathryn Hume's chapter on M&D:
>
> "Pynchon urges wider definitions of reality than those embodied in the
> physical and social world. He pushes us to open ourselves to visionary
> levels. Some of his non-material realities are unclassifiable, but some
> belong to recognized spiritual and religious systems, though he does not
> emphasize Christianity in Mason & Dixon quite as much as he does in Against
> the Day. Pynchon's point is that we need to acknowledge the possibilities.
> Striving to see connections is built into our process of reading Mason &
> Dixon. The other implied worlds or levels of reality are not problems to be
> solved, but rather possibilities to consider, new ways of conceiving our
> ontology " (p. 68)

>
>
>
> On 05.08.2012 08:57, Michael Bailey wrote:
>
>>> cambridge companion to thomas pynchon (reviews? opinions? caveats?)
>
>