Mendelson's View of P's 2ble Vision

[Fiona Shnapple]

And yet, many of the same readers love it in IV, though I recall arguing
that IV is parodic against the wind here. AGTD is surely a more complex
parody, a genre poaching as McHale calls it, but still, the prose in that
mighty book, the long beautiful sentneces readers long for, is parody too.
Is Pynchon not supposed to write a hard boiled parody? Though I maintain
it's soft-boiled, not because of its genre parodies, but because its
protagonist is too often an asshole, not cool enough, though this is one of
P's themes, but I don't find Larry fun or likable, not even in the stoner
fumblings and erotic adventures, I can appreciate it for what it is, a fine
work of art by a great artist. It might be Pynchon Lite after Against the
Day, but what isn't light after the heavy lifting of the bank vault
stopper? Anyways, I' a bit sad to see some of my fewllow new yorkersw
attack the book as offensive to ethnic groups or whatever. Sad for them,
not P. Like, go watch the Simpsons, dudes.
On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Parody, YES! ...an "allusive polemical double"......f'in BRILLIANT phrase,
> IMHO, worthy of
> Mendelson.
>
> Yeah, many readers don't want, it seems.
>
> I suspect that readers don't want the most important double that P has to
> offer in BE: parody, an allusive polemical double.
>
> On Sunday, October 6, 2013, Markekohut wrote:
>
>> Stereoscopic...double vision.....Iceland Spar.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Oct 6, 2013, at 9:00 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> That Flatiron Vision, what in art class and in math and physics class we
>> were taught is the two point perspective, and then vanishing point, and
>> then, of course, Infinity & Entropy, is, in literature an Encyclopedic
>> Vision, not merely in the sense that it is comprehensive, exhaustive if you
>> prefer, but in the sense that the narrative, while steroscopic in depth,
>> winks on either side of the V, like Kilroy, the band-pass-filter, so that
>> we are, as Mendelson says of the setting and context  of GR, in that
>> gestation period, that 9 months around the end of the Second Great War,
>> when contemporary history begins its life, and in the immediate present of
>> the readers, circa 1972. This double Vision allows the author  both a
>> prophetic and satirical Vision.
>>
>>  [the differrences bewtween Anatomy, M-Satire, Encyclopedia have been
>> much discussed here, so...whatever].
>>
>> Recent P scholarship has focused on the use of parody, the encylopedia of
>>  literary styles. This, of course, is what makes AGTD such a masterpiece,
>> one that we put on the top shelf next to Melville's grand encyclopedic
>> romances, M-D, C-M, and with Joyce etc.
>>
>> Brian McHale has turned this to good effect in his essay "Genre as
>> History: Pynchon's Genre-Poaching," which offers a perceptive analysis of
>> Pynchon's incorporation of popular generic forms into his work.
>>
>> https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/26/82
>>
>>
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