Virginia Woolf and/in Thomas Pynchon

[Mark Kohut]

As mentioned and as I read her more--To the Lighthouse now, not like the
first time decades ago--the theme/trope of epiphanic moments in the
everyday is rife. A relevant book thematically has been published about her
work called Moments of Being.

One might say, through a Pynchon lens that it--epiphanic moment-- is akin
to the Word which Oedipa never gets, although she does have all those
secular 'revelations" thru the book and it ends with waiting for an answer,
of course. One might say that those secular revelations are the answers
because the Answer is not forthcoming.

One can also be reminded of P's 'grace' breakthroughs into a new awareness
in places in his works. Lew experiencing his major 'grace' moment, although
heightened (in meaning) and shaped carefully in Against the Day.

The autobiographical elements in Woolf's works are large and were part of
her own very conscious
awareness as she wrote them. To the Lighthouse reworking, thematically
reshaping her parents, her sister, some of the family's famous friends.

So, in a foreword or afterword to one book or another, someone remarks that
Woolf in this book and in Mrs. Dalloway, she was 'oedipal', working in
fiction to try to understand (mostly) her father, a strong, difficult,
famous personage and father. She was thirteen when her mother died. She and
her older sister ultimately differed on their father's character, seen
fictionalized in To the Lighthouse.

Which suddenly gave me this 'answer' to the Oedipa Maas ambiguity of
meanings: With that novel being (also) asearch for America (in the
straightforward lyrics of S & G's song of the 60s...'She's gone to look for
America".....might one not see Oedipa's oedipal quest as a quest to
understand the Founding Father(s)?? in America of the time?
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