AtD gold: the defense

[David Morris]

Morals are the everyday turf of everyone.  Except psychopaths.

Think Koan.  Focus on TRP's love of the failure of logic.

On Saturday, February 25, 2012, Mark Kohut wrote:

> 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.
>
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> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'fqmorris at gmail.com');>>
> To: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'richard.romeo at gmail.com');>>
> Cc: barbie gaze <barbiegaze at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'barbiegaze at gmail.com');>>; pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({},
> 'cvml', '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<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', '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<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', '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<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', '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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