Maxine meets Windust ("Make it literary")

Tue Dec 24 09:03:24 CST 2013

Of course it is. That's the point, isn't it? The tree that Maxine and
her sons see as the story begins is just one tree there in the
neighborhood. One, as you know, of the thousands of pear trees the
city has planted in the tiny spaces left between pavement and real
estate, these trees are quite beautiful and, like Pirate's bananas
have some magical meshings that make them thrive on the pollution and
toxic waters of the street. P's juxtaposition of the survivor tree, a
tourist trap now, profane and commercial, with the tree the boys say,
doesn't suck, is deliberate. To get us to see it, he brings the tree,
it's petals now strewn in the gutter at novel's end.

On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 9:20 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> not to shit on anyone's porridge but isn't this the kinda sentimental stuff
> we all got all too quickly buried in after 9/11
>
> a church near home. jesus and the twin towers, anyone?
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/gkjarvis/285835579/
>
> rich
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
> <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>> I did not know about the Survivor Tree. Highly relevant indeed for a
>> reading of BE based on Northrop Frye's notions of spring, comedy and "Life
>> Returning" -- which I hope to hear more about.
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 21.12.2013 14:53, schrieb Fiona Shnapple:
>>>
>>> The Life Force is not quite exhausted or extinguished. Maxine has only
>>> sons, but the Pear Tree, it's magical magnetic force holds the boys
>>> and Maxine if only for a brief moment as the novel begins, its blossom
>>> petals strewn in the gutter, waste, at the end of the novel, is still
>>> a source of Life Returning, a confirmation of the Body and the here
>>> and now, a force against linear conspiracy that seeks to connect the
>>> dots and discover the causes, and the tree, a made literary and
>>> mythical symbol. is also  as an allusion to the September 11 callery
>>> pear tree that came to be known as the Survivor Tree after sustaining
>>> but living through the September 11, 2001, terror attacks at the World
>>> Trade Center.
>>>
>>> In any event, in the meeting in the restaurant P wants to get The Book
>>> of Leviticus in. It seems an awkward blurting on Maxine's part, she
>>> seems ignorant of the text, though she has been slipping in and out of
>>> a defensive posture, having something to do with her Jewish roots,
>>> though she has not real conscious understanding of them, they return
>>> here with her dietary habit of avoiding pork, though none is offered.
>>> She says, "don't ask", though it's obvious enough she's never asked,
>>> or understood the book. But P must get it in with Sappho here.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 8:09 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> " the return of the repressed" observation and " the "its politics is on
>>>> its sleeve" line are so fine....
>>>> One might argue, given some textual clues----I especially like how
>>>> Maxine, unlike her activist parents, can't like opera----the form of outsize
>>>> emotions dramatized and she, who has an impoverished fantasy
>>>> life.....typifies NYC's final killing of the repressed ( in her generation)
>>>>
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>
>>>> On Dec 21, 2013, at 7:53 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> One could argue that Pynchon is trying to expiate our if not his own
>>>>> sins, Sloth primarily, as described in his essay on that Deadly Sin,
>>>>> and to offer, if not a cure, at least a treatment for addiction to
>>>>> Sherwood Schwartz sitcoms, Law & Order, Friends, Seinfeld, cartoons,
>>>>> jingles.... and so on, but, despite the fact that we have yet another
>>>>> character addicted to the Brady Bunch (Hector in VL, Shawn in BE),
>>>>> this kind of argument doesn't make much sense. There must be another
>>>>> reason why P continues to "make it literary" even as he floods the
>>>>> narrative with pop references.   The making it literary, with
>>>>> allusions and references can't be helped. Neither can pop punctuation
>>>>> that flood the narrative, the dialogue, the thoughts and feelings of
>>>>> characters, especially Maxine because, as protagonist, she at the
>>>>> center of most of the free indirect narration, and because of where
>>>>> and when she was born and how she was raised.  As McHale explains in
>>>>> his essay, "Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland",
>>>>> Pynchon is still working with Brown and plumbing his favorite topic,
>>>>> the Big D. Mediated Lives and Mediated Deaths are the effects, the
>>>>> return of the repressed.
>>>>>
>>>>> To return to the meeting of Maxine and Windust, where I contend the
>>>>> talk of PROMIS and the like is beside the point, mere conspiracy talk
>>>>> that will drive the quest, the detective genre into dead end, and is
>>>>> satirized at every turn, and only distracts us from the mythological
>>>>> and psychological themes. The mixing of Sappho and the Strangers in
>>>>> the Night (the film it was first produced for), the umbrellas
>>>>> touching, Heidi's comments, the madness of Maxine, of all of the
>>>>> characters as they are viewed by the other characters, these are the
>>>>> making it literary things we need to pay attention to and not the
>>>>> conspiracy about September 11. The politics of the novel is on its
>>>>> sleeve. Pynchon doesn't bury his anger or condemnation of the
>>>>> politics, the media, the sad and disgusting behavior of the people
>>>>> after their initial acts of magnanimity, philanthropy and brotherhood.
>>>>> He names Madoff. He names the Mayor. The President. he exposes the
>>>>> Neo-Liberal, Friedman economics of greed etc. There is no smoking gun
>>>>> to be found in this work of fiction. Simply isn't there. Hell, Wired
>>>>> Magazine, or better The Guardian that March reads will ask and answer
>>>>> more questions than P poses.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 'Making it literary' seems almost effortless here in his free & easy
>>>>>> pop
>>>>>> culture style....
>>>>>> He is playing/using his lit notions almost as if quoting himself...at
>>>>>> times.....
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Friday, December 20, 2013 8:52 AM, Fiona Shnapple
>>>>>> <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> In his SL Intro P critiques his "first publish story",  "Small Rain",
>>>>>> noting that he tied to use an ear he had yet to develop, he took his
>>>>>> own bad advice and tried to make the story literary by loading it up
>>>>>> with allusions to Hemingway and Eliot, and, that after decades of
>>>>>> maturity, in retrospect the story contains, a powerful, though at the
>>>>>> time latent, political or class theme that P would focus on through
>>>>>> the rest of his career: how the preterit, the working class embody, in
>>>>>> their work, the moral, and even the intellectual virtues that the
>>>>>> educated class, the managerial class, the elect have claimed as their
>>>>>> capital.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Reading BE one may be put off by the language and the pop references,
>>>>>> but the ear is quite impressive. The ear, the languages that P has
>>>>>> mastered here would draw the praise of Mark Twain, who had quite an
>>>>>> ear, and who famously criticized Cooper for not having one.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In any event, the ear is now amazing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But he continues to make it literary. The technique that Wolfley
>>>>>> describes in his essay on P and the influence of Brown, later analyzed
>>>>>> in depth by critics like McHale, the technique he developed in GR,
>>>>>> reversing cause and effect, to mirror the complexity of contemporary
>>>>>> existence, the transition from Adams and Entropy (V.)  to Adams and
>>>>>> Gravity (GR), continues in BE.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, the meeting between Windust and Maxine here, while dropping some
>>>>>> bread crumbs for the conspiracy theorists, Promis and so forth, is,
>>>>>> underneath, about Maxine & Sapho.  Of course, Eliot's use of the poem
>>>>>> in the Wasteland, doesn't make Maxine the Hyacinth Girl, but P makes
>>>>>> it literary, as usual, and to be distracted by the grand political
>>>>>> chess match, at the expense of the ordinary working men and women, out
>>>>>> in the evening, after work, in the rain, in a cafe for a talk, that
>>>>>> seems so broken by power, so useless, such a waste....but there is, in
>>>>>> the material forces, most of them on Maxine's side of the table, a
>>>>>> dialogue of self and soul worth spilling into the basin. But it works
>>>>>> on the "made literary" level; the political power game is a clogged
>>>>>> toilet.
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>>>
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
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