BtZ42 ye olde unbelievable story

[Joseph Tracy]

Perfect and elegant choice of a sonnet. 
I also benefit from Ish's attention to film, about which I have more limited and sporadic knowledge.
I would add to your description of the possibilities allowed by P’s narrative choices not only parody and irony but truth told slant and straight, descriptive, detailed. metaphoric and historic. 

What I am personally uncomfortable with in terms of reliability of the narrator is a novel where we can’t know that events described in this fictional world are reliable within the framework of the book. At that point all discussion becomes pointless; there is no grounds for settling misunderstanding because there is no grounds for understanding or knowing what is being said.. If Pointsman or Mexico just imagined his foot getting caught in the toilet, or if the narrator just wanted to lie about that event, then the reader is left with no way of connecting to the artistic intent or even the events of the story.. My feeling is that P works hard to construct a story that checks out and holds up as a carefully narrated plot within its own framework, but that he is skilled at showing the  limitations/unreliability of any narrator/s along with the confusion produced by many points of view from the characters.. A tough act. 

Much of this discussion seems to hinge on a particular question regarding Slothrop’s affairs and  whether they happened or whether they are accurately connected to V2 rocket strikes. I want to say that for me the narrative is clear enough and precise enough to indicate that in GR, Slothrop had many encounters with English women, some , if not all, leading to sexual relations, but all important enough to be memorable and inspire stars on his map. The second question is more difficult but it seems to me that P has constructed a plot where both psychic and chemical phenomena are given tremendous significance that specifically make the connection of Slothrop’s hard-ons to Rocket strikes plausible and important within the world of the book. Why Pynchon seems to go to such painstaking elaboration to make this crazy idea stick has potent cultural and historical justification. I personally will be leaning toward an interpretation that says the stars are tokens of women who induced sexual fantasies or affairs in Slothrop and that these fantasies/affairs predicted rocket strikes. I don’t have to believe that Pynchon finds such a connection plausible to believe he would use it as a core plot device.  The reason that P has shaped such a story is much more challenging and of greater interest to me.

What I am trying for in my own limitations as a reader is not a comprehensive reading but a coherent reading that will hold up to textual scrutiny, and make sense of and even in its’ best moments offer satisfying insights into a great work.   












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> On Apr 11, 2016, at 11:02 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> There are endless possibilities for reliability and for un-reliability and for combinations of the endless variations of these two possibilities. Distance too offers endless possibilities.  
> 
> I've been reading short stories. Not the kind I've ever read about on this list. The kind, I think, folks here might find dreadful. These stories are said to fit into the renaissance in American short story making. They are realistic for the most part. And they are written by and heavily influenced by academics. What's striking about them is how they use narrators.
> 
> For example, in one story the narrator tells a bunch of stories, sometimes with photographs to aid her, to audiences who are amazed with her story telling skills, and especially her fancy, that is, with her ability to make, from her imagination, fantastic stories. But the stories are true. They are, essentially, parts of an autobiography. When she tells her stories to her lover, when she, essentially  confesses to her lover, her lover never believes her. It is in this problem that reliability is established. We believe her because others don't. A clever turn. Reminded me of Shakespeare's sonnet about lovers that lie. 
> 
> When my love swears that she is made of truth,
> I do believe her, though I know she lies,
> That she might think me some untutored youth,
> Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
> Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
> Although she knows my days are past the best,
> Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
> On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
> But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
> And wherefore say not I that I am old?
> Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
> And age in love loves not to have years told.
>     Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
>     And in our by lies we flattered be.
> 
> 
> There are, as Booth, in The Rhetoric of Fiction, where the terms reliable and unreliable are coined,  endless possibilities. 
> 
> GR opens in a dream. The dreamer manages other people fantasies. Fantasies are manufactured with films and reels spin into reals. 
> 
> In film, sometimes, there is silence. Sometimes in silent films there is screaming we can see but not hear and sometimes the music of the film makes a scream and a paprodic commentary on the plot. 
> 
> One thing is for sure, Pynchon's narrative choices are important, if only because they permit greater opportunities for irony and parody.  
> 
> In GR, the history of film making is very important. 
> 
> Is the narrator of Pirate's dream, Pirate's dreaming mind,  or someone else's, or is it a movie voice over? Or have the reels meshed with the reals and dreams and fantasies of actors in a world that, as Shakespeare might have said, is all staged....all theater/theatre? 
> 
> 

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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l