The Art of the Acronym in Thomas Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

Authors: Putz, Manfred.
Source :Studies in the Novel, Fall91, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p371, 12p.

Abstract:Explores the use of acronyms in the novels of Thomas Pynchon.
Stage of development where playing with acronyms is turned into
literary art with sophisticated functions and effects; Tendency
towards growing disagreement on definitions; Tradition in the use of
abbreviations; Parodistic dimension of acronyms in Pynchon's fiction;
Playfulness in the creation of acronyms.


The term acronym, the Oxford English Dictionary states, designates "A
word formed from the initial letters of other words." Originally
coined in the United States, the term is regarded as a neologism which
allegedly became current during the forties of our century, while the
phenomenon itself is considered to be a growing fad of our time. Today
acronyms and abbreviations of all sorts are not only a standard, often
irritating, feature of non-literary discourse, but they are also in
the process of becoming a conspicuous element in works of literature.
In this context, the frequent and almost provocative use of acronyms
in the novels of Thomas Pynchon marks a stage of development where
playing with this form of words is turned into a literary art with
sophisticated functions and effects. Before we can examine these
effects, it is necessary to have a look at certain aspects of the
general linguistic discussion of the phenomenon in question.

In the recent past, linguists have mainly dealt with the problem of
acronymy in the context of word-formation, and many of the standard
linguistic contributions aim at the identification of constitutive
structural features of the acronym in contrast to related forms of
abbreviations such as clippings and blends. Thus Laurie Bauer, in
English Word-Formation, offers the following definitions under the
telling heading "Unpredictable formations":

Clipping refers to the process whereby a lexeme (simplex or complex)
is shortened, while still retaining the same meaning and still being a
member of the same form class. (Cf. deli for delicatessen)

A blend may be de fined as a new lexeme formed from parts of two (or
possibly more) other words in such a way that there is no transparent
analysis into morphs. (Cf. slithy as a combination of lithe and slimy)

An acronym is a word coined by taking the initial letters of the words
in a title or phrase and using them as a new word, for example
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks gives SALT. However, not every
abbreviation counts as an acronym: to be an acronym the new word must
not be pronounced as a series of letters, but as a word.[ 1].

Other linguists have delved deeper into the matter, and have analyzed
acronyms and related forms from a variety of synchronic and
aliachronic perspectives.2 In the widening debate, there is a steady
increase of terminological differences and a tendency towards growing
disagreement on definitions. Terms such as "initialism,"
"alphabetism," "letter word," "alphabetical combination," and
"acrostic acronym" seem to develop almost independently of each other,
intermixing freely with other terms such as "siglum," "protogram,"
"portmanteau word," "alphabetical shortening," and "telescope word,"
until the confusion is almost perfect[ 3]. Definitions of each of
these forms, and in particular of what constitutes the acronym proper,
vary greatly and have developed to the point of partly or totally
contradicting each other.[ 4] Almost as if to add to the growing
confusion, current dictionaries of abbreviations have frequently
reverted to the practice of listing abbreviations of all sorts without
differentiating among the many congeners and subcategories of this
class of words.[ 5]

However, where there is disagreement there are also opportunities for
agreement, and it comes as a relief to the student of acronymy that
such opportunities are seized by the participants of the debate in
several respects. Wide-spread accord among linguists seems to exist in
at least four areas touching upon the origin and the uses of acronyms.

( 1) The use of abbreviations, sometimes prematurely considered to be
a modern phenomenon, has a tradition of long standing. It has
frequently been pointed out that classical antiquity provided examples
such as the Roman SPQR for Senatus Populusque Romanus. It has also
been noted, in reference to specifically American uses, that in
colonial times as well as during the early Republic abbreviations of
all sorts were well known.[ 6]

( 2) Though acronymy has long been a standard feature of many
languages, its most productive period, so linguists stress, came more
recently and was dependent on various big producers of abbreviations
getting into the game. Jespersen noted already in his Modern English
Grammar on Historical Principles that an increased use of "Alphabetic
Shortenings" became a "fashion during the first world war."[ 7] Other
observers have unanimously emphasized the fact that subsequently the
big machines of military and civilian bureaucracies, as much as
rapidly growing academic, political, and technological institutions,
became the main producers of a great variety of abbreviations and
acronyms. One early commentator entitled his contribution "Acronym
Talk, or 'Tomorrow's English,'" and predicted, in 1947, that we would
soon see another considerable speed-up in the production of this form
of word.[ 8] There is no denying that the prediction was accurate and
that for the past decades we have been living in the middle of a
fadish trend that has aptly been labelled "abbreviomania,"
"acronymania," or "initialese."[ 9]

( 3) A third area of agreement among linguists is that there are
different types of acronyms and that their divergency asks for a
typology of the acronym as much as for a diachronic sketch of its
development. Apparently there are marked stages in the history of the
acronym, and the rapid growth of certain recent forms can be seen as a
reliable measure to their contemporary popularity.[ 10] Today the most
popular form seems to be what Alvin Gregg calls the "acrostic
acronym," fashioned after the "Principle of semantic
Appropriateness,"[ 11] or what another linguist alternatively calls
the "prefabricated acronym," which is chosen for its "catchy
suitability."[ 12] What is meant in both cases is a type of acronym
that fulfills the following conditions: it has to be pronounceable
orthoepically as opposed to merely alphabetically (NATO or SALT versus
LSD); it has to be identical in pronunciation and spelling
(homonymous) with an already existing word of the language (SALT or
WASP as opposed to RADAR or SCUBA); its meaning has to offer a
suggestive comment on the phrase or combination of words from which it
derives. Striking examples for acronyms which fulfill the three
conditions are FIST (for "Federation of Inter-State Truckers"), and
the more than slightly mischievous CREEP (coined by opponents to the
Nixonlan "Committee to Re-elect the President"). As can be imagined,
this type of acronym is much in demand these days for its witty,
ironic, caustic, etc. potentials.[ 13] This, in turn, has led to an
interesting practice: It is obvious that today in many witty acronymic
formations the target word was first on the inventor's mind, and that
only then a search was instigated to find a suitable larger phrase or
combination of words that would serve as the ideal supplier for the
elements of the intended target word (hence the characterization of
such forms as "prefabricated acronyms").[ 14]

( 4) A final tenet of more or less tacit accord among acronym watchers
seems to be that the occurrence of such forms is mainly a distinctive
characteristic of non-literary discourse and that their stylistic or
literary implications are of small consequence. Though some linguists
notice, very much in passing, that the abundant use of blends,
clippings, and acronyms might be a stylistic indication to
familiarity, others rate acronyms and related forms flatly as
stylistically neutral,[ 15] or, somewhat more cautiously, count them
among the "peripheral vocabulary of the language" that is not usually
found in formal writing.[ 16] In any case, the linguists usually stop
short of elaborate stylistic and literary analysis of the phenomenon,
and thus leave the matter of functions and effects arising from the
calculated use of acronyms to the literary critic.

Historically considered, the verdict that acronyms belong to the
peripheral vocabulary of the English language certainly holds true for
long periods of English and American literature. Though there are
early examples of initial abbreviations in Swift (Journal to Stella),
who otherwise vehemently protested against the modish trend towards
"degenerated" clippings, and though Lewis Carroll, in Through the
Looking-Glass, playfully experimented with funny blends which he
called"portmanteau words,"[ 17] it can be said that English and
American writers were generally slow in discovering the specific
effects to which acronyms, in particular those of a more sophisticated
kind, can be put in literature. Thomas Pynchon is a notable exception
to the rule in that he confronts the readers of his novels and stories
with a host of puzzling abbreviations which seem to constitute their
own universe of expanding acronymania.[ 18] Among the many functions
and effects of the literary usage of acronymy in Pynchon, his
parodistic, satirical, intertextual, and symbolical uses are perhaps
the most interesting. It is also noteworthy that in Pynchon the higher
or more sophisticated functions generally embody part or all of the
lower functions.

In Pynchon's fiction the most accessible level in the uses of acronyms
is constituted by their calculated overuse which, in turn, establishes
a parodistic dimension. Thus Gravity's Rainbow, which plays during the
Second World War, becomes a virtual display ground for the immense
flood of initial abbreviations then in circulation among the insiders
of military organizations and intelligence agencies of all kinds.
There is hardly a page in the novel without reference to topical
abbreviations, which eventually develop into a veritable pandemonium
of acronymania that has its distinctly parodistic sides.

Pynchon shares the practice of using acronyms as gist on the mills of
his parody with other works of contemporary fiction, which also make
fun of certain features of a given system by meticulously exposing the
absurdities of its language. As far as military abbreviomania is
concerned, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) had already employed the
device of marking the absurdities of the military cosmos by drawing
our attention to the tiresome mechanics of its language, particularly
its wide-spread initialese. As far as similar tendencies in the
contemporary academic and industrial worlds are concerned, David
Lodge's Nice Work (1988) followed suit by parodying their propensity
towards the abundant use of acronyms in extensive passages. Thus, in
Lodge's novel, the VC (Vice-Chancellor) of Rummige University
introduces the recently administered SS (Shadow Scheme) to his Deans
in a memorandum that reads:

As you are no doubt aware, 1986 has been designated Industry Year by
the Government. The DES, through the UGC, have urged the CVCP to
ensure that universities throughout the UK --

To which a bewildered reader of the message replies in helpless
resignation: "He does love acronyms, doesn't he."[ 19]

The predominantly parodistic function of acronym talk is more than
obvious in Pynchon's fiction. To quote only some of the more
extravagant inventions beyond the welter of authentic abbreviations,
The Crying of Lot 49 presents IA for "Inamorati Anonymous" (p. 112),
with due reference to AA for "Alcoholics Anonymous;" it claims that
ACDC stands for "Alameda County Death Cult" (p. 122); and CIA for
"Conjuracion de los Insurgentes Anarquistas" (p. 119). In Vineland,
THO is explained as "Teen Hair Obsession" (p. 98); and UBI means
"Universal Binding Ingredient," which figures as the secret to a
successful Spinach Casserole (p. 111); BAAD and FEER respectively
stand for "Black Afro-American Division" (p. 230) and "Federal
Emergency Evacuation Route" (p. 249). In V., the cryptic MYSAH is said
to be insider talk for "Make Yourself At Home" (p. 129); and in
Gravity's Rainbow, ACHTUNG reads "Allied Clearing House, Technical
Units, Northern Germany" (p. 17), whereas SEZ WHO stands for
"Slothropian Episodic Zone, Weekly Historical Observations" (p. 271).

Such inventive proliferation of bizarre acronyms at first seems to
point to mere playfulness as the motivational force behind their
creation, a playfulness which is then coupled with parodistic
intentions. However, the widening scope of the acronym games played in
Pynchon soon raises the suspicion that there is more to these games
than initially meets the eye. Clues to this development, which pulls
an increasing number of participants into the action, are scattered
throughout the author's work. As the MYSAH example from V. shows, the
use of bizarre acronyms is no longer restricted to the code of certain
bureaucratic sub-languages with their inherent tendencies towards
pragmatic but mindless language deformation. It is rather that
practically all forms of communication from private to public
discourse, from idiolects and sociolects to everyday speech, become
infested with the same pervasive mechanisms. As a consequence, the
reader becomes more and more uncertain of what are authentic examples,
individual exaggerations, ironic deformations, or just crazy
inventions in this world of acronymania. Are the already quoted
examples of BAAD and FEER actual specimens from the spectrum of
contemporary initialese or not? Is there a possibility that an
experimental research group by the name of ARF (Abreaction Research
Facility), a personality test designated MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory), and a program called PISCES (Psychological
Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender) actually existed during
World War II, as Gravity's Rainbow (pp. 75, 81, 34) would have us
believe? MMPI, of course, existed as an actual test and as a
correlated acronym, whereas ARF and PISCES seem to be ingenious
inventions. In any case, the reader of Pynchon's novels is drawn into
a maze of speculations where strange acronymic forms might turn out to
be what they seem, just as much as they could be literary hoaxes.

The calculated blurring of such distinctions, which parallels the
general blurting of fact and fiction in Pynchon, leads over to an
ironic and a satirical dimension in the acronym games played by the
author. Many of the above examples have a distinct ironical twist,
making us aware of the discrepancies between what has been stated in a
given catch phrase or concept and its correlated acronymic form. This
irony branches out in different directions and eventually permeates
the whole world of acronym talk in Pynchon. In some cases, the
ironical effects arise from turning certain ideas or phrases into
telling formulas which reveal their blatant contradiction, or
satirically denounce their pretentious content. Thus, in Vineland, the
California-based "National Endowment for Video Education and
Rehabilitation" with their program to "study and treat Tubal abuse and
other video-related disorders" (pp. 32f) turns into NEVER; a federal
"Campaign Against Marijuana Production" becomes CAMP (p. 49); the
Federal Prosecutor's "Political Re-Education Program" is acronymized
PREP (p. 268); the black revolutionaries' "Ultra High-speed Urban
Reconnaissance Unit" becomes UHURU (p. 231);[ 20] and Ronald Reagan's
alleged "readiness exercise" (p. 353) acquires the code name REX 84.
In a similar ironic reversal in the novel V., the proudest inventions
of modem technology at "Anthroresearch Associates," namely the two
automatons "synthetic human, radiation output determined" and
"synthetic human object, casualty kinematics," are revealingly
acronymized SHROUD and SHOCK (pp. 284ff).

In other cases, there is a self-ironic twist to certain acronyms. In
Gravity's Rainbow, for instance, PSH stands for "Paranoid Systems of
History," which allegedly was "a short-lived periodical of the 1920s
whose plates have all mysteriously vanished" (p. 238). If one
considers that the suspicion of paranoia, especially when referring to
interpretations of history, is one of Pynchon's favorite topics, the
self-ironic turn of the above reference becomes immediately obvious.

Moreover, some acronyms in Pynchon develop an ironic dimension by
accentuating glaring paradoxes arising from the uncontrolled growth of
abbreviations in an acronym-ridden world. In Vineland, one of the
characters, Darryl Louise Chastain, is customarily referred to as DL.
However, when Zoyd Wheeler's daughter Prairie meets her in one
episode, she tells DL that she always thought this combination of
letters meant "Disabled List" (p. 100). What Pynchon is playfully
doing in this episode is drawing our attention to a paradox in modem
communications about which linguists and everyday language users alike
have complained. It is the paradox that the mindless overproduction of
abbreviations, allegedly meant to facilitate communication, eventually
brings about the opposite effect. As we know from the world of
everyday discourse, the inherent ambiguity of many acronyms has led to
endless speculations on what a given acronym might stand for when we
first encounter it. Subsequently this situation has given rise to a
game with a vengeance, which the irritated addressees of cryptic
acronyms play upon their relentless tormentors. Thus DL is ironically
turned into "Disabled List," just as GIs during the Korean War turned
R & R (for "Rest and Recreation") into "Rape and Restitution," and
more recently frustrated passengers of a French airline turned UTA
into "Unlikely To Arrive."

It cannot be overlooked that most of the acronyms quoted above openly
reflect a satirical attitude towards the affairs, institutions, and
ideas of a grotesque contemporary world. The satire, frequently
compressed into the nutshell of a revealing acronym, cuts two ways in
Pynchon. On the one hand, it is directed against the aberrations of
modem forms of communication in which manipulation, mindless
imitation, and the latest fad reign supreme. On the other hand, it
finds its targets in the whacky universe of things and concepts
constituted by a language of self-enclosed vision and domination.

If we combine both aspects, there appears to be yet another, somewhat
more complicated and encompassing dimension to Pynchon's satirical
play with acronyms. At the end of World War II, H. L. Mencken had
drawn, in his well-known study The American Language, the attention of
acronym watchers to an ongoing controversy over the alleged political
leanings of those institutions and organizations which were
responsible for the raging overproduction of abbreviations and
acronyms. Mencken had quoted the opinion of the New York Times that
turning simple abbreviations (in which the New Deal period as much as
the time during World War II had actually abounded in America) into
acronyms that looked like separate new words was a typical
totalitarian custom whose nasty tendencies proved in yet another way
"the moral superiority of the American way of life."[ 21] In the
ensuing debate the inaccuracies of the linguistic observations by the
Times were demonstrated and the political naivete of their conclusions
was exposed. However, in more recent discussions of a similar bent,
linguists have held that certain aspects of this antiquated debate
were perhaps not as naive as they might first appear. It was asked
whether the uncontrolled output of abbreviations in any form and
number was not indeed an indication of the growing supremacy of big
bureaucracy over society and individual life, and hence could be
interpreted as an index towards totalitarian tendencies to set the
dehumanizing role of bureaucracy over everything else.[ 22]

I believe that at least in some of Pynchon's novels the proliferation
of acronyms associated with big bureaucracy and other threatening
machines can be seen in the very context of the above debate. There is
a haunting fear of Big Brother bureaucracy, all-incorporating systems,
and other forms of dehumanized functionalism at large in Pynchon, and
the reader's suspicion is raised that he is supposed to recognize them
by their instruments of control and domination. Language, in this
context, becomes the most obvious instrument of domination, and the
author satirizes the language uses of those he detests and fears in
order to satirize the users themselves in a more efficient way. It
appears that in Pynchon wide-spread forms of acronymania are an
important part of his satirical picture of the world and that his
satire on verbal aspects in modem communications is actually the
vehicle of a more encompassing satire on the concealed totalitarian
and overt technocratic tendencies of contemporary life as such.

However, there are still other sophisticated functions in Pynchon's
use of acronyms. Beside satirical implications, SHOCK and SHROUD, for
instance, have obvious metaphorical and symbolical functions. They
stand, as it were, as symbols and tokens for a system that constantly
converts elements of human existence into technological gimmicks and
thus constitutes a world of counterproductive developments which end
in the total negation of that which was originally aspired. It is this
symbolical dimension of certain key concepts the form of acronyms that
Pynchon explores to the full measure in some of his earlier works.

Three symbols or emblems which partly take the form of cryptograms
play a conspicuous role in The Crying of Lot 49. They are the
pictorial and verbal representation of a muted post horn (pp, 52, 84,
96f); the emblematic legend DEATH on this post horn (p. 121); and the
omnipresent cryptogram WASTE or W.A.S.T.E. which appears in the same
context. As we learn in the course of the novel, DEATH stands for
"Don't Ever Antagonize the Horn" (p. 121); the post horn itself is the
emblem of a subversive society which Oedipa Maas discovers at work
almost everywhere in America; and the cryptogram WASTE ominously
signifies "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire" (p. 169). If we
concentrate on WASTE as the central acronym, we quickly become aware
of its manifold dimensions as a multi-functional signifier. To begin
with, WASTE has an apparent intertextual dimension in that it evokes a
reference to Eliot's "Waste Land" as one of modem literature's
best-known symbols for the alleged state of the contemporary world.
Yet when it is discovered in the novel that WASTE is more than a
familiar literary allusion and directly refers to the underworld of a
mysterious countersystem at large in America, the acronym becomes the
vehicle of additional symbolical meanings. In one respect, WASTE
epitomizes the modem netherworld of the Tristero System which is
composed of the misfits, the alienated, and the disinherited of an
otherwise glittering world of success in America. In another respect,
it characterizes dominant social and political aspects of the very
mainstream society which in its ruthless and destructive ways
constantly produces waste by-products such as the Tristero System.

But more than that, the acronym WASTE also becomes the central enigma
of the whole novel which, as usual in Pynchon, deals in enigmas of
quasi metaphysical proportions. There is a central passage in The
Crying of Lot 49, which conspicuously couples certain initials with
the concept of metaphorical and, we may add, symbolical sense behind
them:

Behind the initials was a metaphor, a delirium tremens, a trembling
unfurrowing of the mind's plowshare. The saint whose water can light
lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the
true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or
threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns
probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same
special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there,
buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor then was a thrust
at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or
outside, lost. (pp. 128f)

We may say that in the light of this passage the heroine's task
reveals itself as the task of bringing structure and meaning to the
chaotic phenomena of a given world that precisely refuses to yield
forms of order and meaningful structure. By exposing such efforts, in
the later course of the novel, as largely futile, Oedipa's very
activities are characterized as a symbolical waste of time. In turn,
this apparent futility epitomizes the absurdities of modem man's
pursuit of final solutions to the enigmas of this world, as much as it
symbolizes the failure of the reader's frantic attempts at final
interpretations of that which obstinately remains random and
incoherent. In this way, the novel quite generally suggests that most
human efforts are waste, just as our illusions of systematic coherence
are presumptuous. The Crying of Lot 49 shows Pynchon at his old game
of reflecting a contemporary sickness unto death which is only
aggravated by our obsessive attempts at therapy. The central concept
of WASTE, however, literally spells out the structural principle and
the inherent message of the novel by compressing both into the
nutshell of a telling acronym.

The functions of the literary usage of acronyms, then, are manifold
and diversified in Pynchon. What remains to be asked is the question
of why Pynchon of all contemporary authors is the one who pushes these
functions to their limits, and thereby raises the acronym game almost
to the status of a literary art. Linguists have often argued that the
invention of new and surprising word forms goes back to a major
impulse in most variations of language innovation: inherent
playfulness. Others have added a certain edge to such observations by
holding that playing with blends and acronyms is a fairly simplistic
game that can be pursued even by ordinary language users and hence
enjoys a wide-spread popularity.[ 23] And indeed there is plenty of
playfulness in Pynchon's novels, a playfulness that matches well with
the simple joys of the Pop orientations and the trivial pursuit to
which his fiction leans time and again. But I believe that this is not
the whole story of the author's fascination with acronyms and that
more profound reasons for the affiliation can be identified.

For one, there is Pynchon's relentlessly satirical attitude towards
most phenomena of the modem world. And what better way is there for a
writer to expose the inadequacies of a given world than drawing a
satirical picture of its bizarre verbal gimmicks which become the more
glaring the more provocatively they are outdone in their own
department? In this respect, Pynchon's acronym games look like a
literary ploy that is meant to offend the offenders, a game of getting
even with those who are not used to swallowing large portions of the
very medicine they so mindlessly dish out.

Another deeper reason for Pynchon's fascination with acronyms seems to
lie in their enigmatic and semantically open structure. Any acronym
when we first encounter it is a mystery, an enigma, a problem posed
and a puzzle to be solved. As we all know, Pynchon surely loves a
mystery, an enigmatic "case" to be investigated, and his novels
frequently center around such cases and become elaborate metaphysical
detective tales, or crossbreeds, so to speak, between mystery fiction,
detective fiction, and philosophical investigation. Can it surprise
us, then, that an author, whose fictional worlds often seem to become
gigantic puzzles which perpetually create other puzzles, finds the
enigmatic nature of the acronym a fascinating challenge to his
imagination? I believe that it is no accident that some of the more
memorable acronyms in Pynchon's fiction are actually cryptograms. For
we may say that the cryptic nature of the world is one of Pynchon's
favorite topics and, consequently, that the acronym as cryptogram
comprises the essence of his fiction in a nutshell.

Considering such affiliations between thematic preoccupation and
linguistic structure in Pynchon, one might wonder whether the author's
acronymania will prove to be a constant feature of his literary works,
and also whether it will spread, as it has already done to a certain
degree, from his novels to the works of other contemporary authors
with similar orientations. The answer, of course, can only be
speculative, but here is what one critic thinks of the future of
acronyms, and his prediction, not surprisingly, sounds like a summary
of the role, function, and future of this form of words in Pynchon:
"They are works of art to be constructed and secrets to be unraveled .
. . They are playthings for the poet, icons for the mystic, tools for
the bureaucrat, and data for the linguist. And anything that can serve
all those ends has its future assured."[ 24]

UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG

[notes to follow]

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/literary-criticism/9610231657/art-acronym-thomas-pynchon

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=b4a2d8cd-cb3b-426c-a52b-59c96782b8d4%40sessionmgr13&vid=1&hid=19&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=9610231657