M&D - Chapter 21 - Mason&Rebekah

[Jerome Park]

Tanner, Tony. The American Mystery: American Literature from Emerson to
DeLillo. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000,  242pp., ISBN: 0521783747

On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In this example the hypothetical or subjunctive dialogue is only a
> paragraph. And there it is, right there, on the same page. Had he, instead,
> would have...
>
> Why rub it in?
>
> All subjunctive, of course, *had *young Mason gone to his father, this *might
> have been* the conversation likely to result.
>
> I don't think Pynchon has underestimated the reader here. There is
> something else to it.
>
> Tony Tanner says that P's use of the subjunctive is "an elegiac lament for
> the accelerating erosion of subjunctivity (225).
>
> A brilliant reader that Tony Tanner!
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 1:13 PM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Next paragraph, an imagined dialogue between Mason and his father as
>> Jerome points out. Do you agree, though, that the last sentence: «All
>> subjunctive, of course, *had *young Mason gone to his father, this *might
>> have been* the conversation likely to result.» is over the top. I mean
>> it’s not as if we’ve forgotten it was imaginary from the start?
>>
>> Don't you feel a little underestimated as a reader?
>>
>> ;)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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