M&D Deep Duck 7-9: Why doesn't Mason sleep with Austra?

[Mark Kohut]

Agree with Morris, Becky, terrif guidepost. Thanks.

Becky writes: "I think  Cherrycoke is *understood* (by the reader)  to
be telling the story to his audience but that's in the background of
the omniscient narrator parts and he's using his own words back there
with the kids,  not the words we're reading in the less personal (I,
us, we)  sections of the narrative.  Cherrycoke introduces a vision or
something - a flashback,  but the omniscient narrator is there at the
scene."

I would say that this paragraph of yours is how I think I have been
reading it. Once Cherrycoke became the frame narrator, I presumed he
SOMEHOW told the whole story, Pynchon-cagy-like IN some scenes,
witnessing some scenes he could not have---told to him, if we want to
pin down how; and for some of the stories that Mason might never tell
the Reverend, I believe he would, ultimately, after their long
intimacy, have told Dixon who would recount. That Cherrycoke SOMEHOW
(part of Pynchon"s magic realism?, so to speak, along with Talking
Dogs, etc.)) tells the whole story is needed, it seems to me, to
explain how the Rev's audience would even get a 'whole story'. See p.
75, where the Rev comes back to say, "Even by then", etc...implying,
yes, that he has told his audience of the preceding 'objective'
omnisciently seen Astronomy stuff at least. And the preceding risqué
stuff, per Jochen's challenge? Seems so to me.

Here is more words on omniscient fictional narration than most want to
read: "Certain third-person omniscient modes are also classifiable as
"third person, subjective" modes that switch between the thoughts,
feelings, etc. of all the characters.This style, in both its limited
and omniscient variants, became the most popular narrative perspective
during the 20th century. In contrast to the broad, sweeping
perspectives seen in many 19th-century novels, third-person subjective
is sometimes called the "over the shoulder" perspective;

"The third-person omniscient narrator is the least capable of being
unreliable--although the omniscient narrator can have its own
personality, offering judgments and opinions on the behavior of the
characters.
In addition to reinforcing the sense of the narrator as reliable (and
thus of the story as true), the main advantage of this mode is that it
is eminently suited to telling huge, sweeping, epic stories, and/or
complicated stories involving numerous characters."

But, I do think Jochen is right on my lazy remark that because
Cherrycoke is an unreliable narrator, Austra's story is therefore
unreliable. No therefore at all. Jochen, and you and Laura and others
have to be right about some distinction between Cherrycoke's
self-confessed unreliability and Pynchon's historical reality. He has
to, as Jochen repeats---but I'd love him to make the case with
examples---be writing a real historical novel (of some kind) or else
there is no ground to his vision, no history there (allusion to: "no
there there").

I think that his vision IS contained in the writing that is that
third-person omniscient narrator but often Not in the events but in
the prose, the subtexts, the intellectual notions embodied in reasons
behind the scenes, the words of those scenes, etc.(and his framings
and unreliabilities hold that vision too. Like an Ampersand)

With talking dogs, mechanical ducks, other things, we cannot be in a
usual historical novel, right?





On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 10:52 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Think of it like a movie."
>
> Better Pynchon advice could not be had!
>
> DM
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l