AtD gold: the defense

[Mark Kohut]

Surely directed at me as much as at Barbie Gaze......

I'll take the hit.....I think it is clear that TRP uses certain tropes in certain ways
and I think he is a writer with a vision. 
Writers with vision see things, history, people, situations, through eyeglasses
that judge...the judging is a perspective that we can always call 'moral'--
if I or they are 'moralistic' or narrow then we fail.
Any writer who lasts, who is worth reading, can be commented on simplistically---
which I am sure I do---yet two things:

1) the embedding in the work is not (necessarily) simplistic
2) 'reducing a meaning' to a simplistic equation is often just part of adding up
all of those simplistic bits to build to that vision. 

It is how we see TRP use iron, steel, crystal and industrial machines--and
much more to 'say something' about the world created by that "industrial revolution"---
it is pervasive--even in offhand similes....that, I say, is a 'moral vision", part of a moral vision. 
it is simplistic to say baldly that "he is against the industrial revolution" "he is a Luddite" yet 
that is part of his vision fer sure. yes?

As his meanings of grace are part of that vision, yes?  

Yes, this on gold below is pretty simplistic, sorry, but rereading AtD this time after
Inherent Vice and GR again, with the stuff on gold in them, I can see 
how steadily he works the metaphor and links it to the perspective of
"Shit, Money & The Word" . And "the tyranny of the Gold Standard" seems to be taken straight as it comes from the narrator---like
the words on Lake as virgin bride. 
....."what Cross of Gold will we be crucified on now [without Gold]?"
is more wrenching, more insightful in AtD when one---at least I---know all the times TRP 
refers to gold and the struggle to earn some. 
I was still confused about Nixon and the Gold Standard and I am still wondering
this reading about silver, too. 

I suggest Pynchon is as interesting for the breadth and depth of his associative poetic tropes
and his moral vision of history, the world, we in it, as for his incredibly interesting
metaphors, surreal happenings, over-the-top events, and symbolic characters etc.....

I say we can't read him without thoughts of what the words mean.....This is so simplistically true I hesitated
writing it. yet, think on that. If asked, what would you say about certain aspects?..........
 Lots of differing readings, of course yet lots that seem wrong too. Certain ones cannot both be right
 
 The ideas which can be reductively found in any writer are not what make the great.
a great writer. John Leonard once wrote in a review of five novels, one by Chabon, that one theme of all might be said that there was nothing like a 
perfect summer day when you were a boy....yet each book did that differently and was also more than that....

Every scene, every character, every plot turn and almost every line in Shakespeare carries MEANING, 
(even if sometimes that meaning is that they were "just bantering", just counterpointing a theme, just being 'real' amidst
the patterned action.). His sonnets were 'summed up' in banal truths the first time I read them, yet........the richness
is in the way and all the nuances and associations, many seemingly half-buried.

That is what I believe about Pynchon, who was thinking EVERY moment he wrote, i suggest,
even, of course, if some of the prose is just "atmospheric" ( a legitimate
goal in fiction), as with any Tolstoy or David Foster Wallace. But he also embeds ideas everywhere
and I love trying to see them....get them.

It is the way our best readers from Samuel Johnson, through Keats, Coleridge and Trilling (or you name them) write about what they read
 and --we call them 'critics' usually. But I am not them, just me flailing like someone in The Recognitions. Not just flailing but
waving. Sometimes while drowning.
 
I need to just point out subtle beauty as I see it more too. we listers quote often from all the toher books but seldom from AtD. Many think it 
weak, or the weakest. I think we have yet to 'get' a lot of it----even after all we did/do get....

Not any plisters but SOME  are always against any "translation" into meaning
because they feel "it misses the experience"; it takes "the fun/richness/interest" out of the text, etc. 
All true but for many in my experience that means "I don't know", don't believe in thinking it through just "feeling it", 
"your reading is not the only one"----so true, which is why I love rich books and other opinions. I have read too many books
---unpublished ones that should stay that way---that are as simplistic as my tired remarks on a genius's meaning. They are
so narrow in meaning they are their own translation.  

Sorry this is so long and more sorry that I am boring some here and with the posts......I would appreciate the continued
pointing out of simplicities so I can try to express them with more nuance and aggregated examples.  

You (can) delete therefore you exist. 












----- Original Message -----
From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
Cc: barbie gaze <barbiegaze at gmail.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: AtD gold

I agree, but I've stopped calling these simplistic equations banal.
If true, Pynchon would be one of the least interesting writers on
earth.

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 8:25 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> nice words but high falutin bullshit
> this is bad; this is good.
> try again fella
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 7:24 PM, barbie gaze <barbiegaze at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Gold is the cloven foot of all devils. America is the silver lie in the devil's garden.
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 8:31 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> "After the repeal of the Silver Act, gold resumed its tyrannical rule".....[maybe not an exact quote].
>>>
>>> Gold is bad shit in AtD, in TRP in general, and a symbol for America's striving for money?  Shit, Money, etc...
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