Misc. new reader of Inherent Vice

[Mark Kohut]

Not to mention the clock in Julius Caesar

and all the chronology mash-ups in the history plays........


----- Original Message -----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: 
Sent: Sunday, January 8, 2012 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: Misc. new reader of Inherent Vice

> (Not that such chronolgy matters for the judgment of many of us since we expect this playfulness about
> such from Pynchon).

We might contrast Pynchon with Shakespeare in this, take Hamlet, a
character who seems to be around 20 at the start of the play, a play
that covers no more than two months, but, as the clown in act five,
the famous graveyear scene,  tells us, is thirty years of age. What is
more, the prince, who seems to know far too much about playwrighting
and acting, or at least far more than a prince-philosopher might even
if he cut classes and took to the globe a truant, he does study at
Luther's famous University, that, does not exist when Hamlet is Prince
of Denmark,  and...so on. Of course, we needn't resort to bardolatry
to find excuses for Shakespeare and we might apply the same to Pynchon
and, in doing so, discover the method in such apparent madeness. Like,
what Kai said about Pynchon's 1970s American readers might help us
uncover his view of Amerika. In like fashion, Shakespeare fashioned
quite a complex web, weaving himself into the play; as actor he played
both the Ghost-King Hamlet and Player King in the Mousetrap. Clever.
As ever in Shakespeare's distracted globe/Globe, we discover his
genius in our own faults and misreadings. Again, this is not
bardolatry, for Shakespeare was a man, with faults and he made errors
in his comedies, but his tragedies are....well....not equaled by any
other thus far.