Pynchon's Children

[alice malice]

I too enjoyed this one, but wished the author had developed some of
the ideas a bit more, like that one on gravity and grace. Like, what
the hell does he mean by plopping that on the reader? Does he expect
his readers to get, maybe the most complex idea in Pynchon's works
from that one little sentence? The Gave and Grave Gravity of Grace!
Oh yeah, I get it. Thank God I read the first American Epic by one
Wigglesworth.


 In any event, I think the distinction that the author makes between
the ending of Lot49 and the others is a false one. What we get in P
novel endings is not many closures in any traditional sense, or even
in any Modernist sense. What we get from Pynchon is a bunch of
narratives that tangle in lines and loop back, that produce a kind of
palimpsest we can't take or find closure in.

Some are from narrators that have privileged views, though they are
blinded by biases, prejudices, agendas, including one that undermine
other narrators, or frustrate any linking of cause and effect,

and we get narration  from a bunch characters, a kind of negative
perspectivism,

some of these not only contradict other narratives, but what has been
reported or reflected by the character in a earlier part of the novel.

We can't have closure. As Pynchon paints over a painting he erases the
world, then he magically exposes the under layers, then, as one fine P
scholar describes it, lets us have a magic eye view of the underside
of the tapestry.

But there we are awed by Grace, by, as pip saw, the foot of God, or
maybe it's just Pynchon, on the peddle of the loom.



On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well worth reading - thanks!
>
> "Pynchon’s novels are full of happy endings, which range from minor
> reconciliations and changes of tone (see the last 100 pages of Gravity’s
> Rainbow), to family reunions (Vineland), gentle reversals of fortune
> (everywhere), and full-blown utopias (Against The Day). We tend to think of
> Pynchon ending his tales with a hammer about to drop—a sinister auctioneer
> glaring at Oedipa in the last paragraph of The Crying of Lot 49, or a rocket
> careering to earth as Gravity’s Rainbow winds down—but he keeps so many
> plots in play, and introduces us to so many characters, that there are many
> kinds of closure on offer in the novels, only a fraction of which take place
> on the final page.
>
> In Bleeding Edge, as in every other Pynchon novel, the background is full of
> late modulations from gravity to grace..."
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 6:33 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.publicbooks.org/fiction/pynchons-children
>
>
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