my reading manifesto for the BtZ42 Read

[Mark Kohut]

Thomas Pynchon is a writer, an artist, with a vision of life, of
history, of human meanings --or lack thereof--in our world, his world.
each novel has a vision, if it works, that kaleidoscopes that vision
and is part of his full vision over a lifetime.

Novels have 'symbolic form', embodying political and other
perspectives within the author's way of structuring. Structuring
includes irony, satire and other ways of embodying what seems the
literal into the not so, or what seems the surreal into the real.
Fiction has a covalent bond with the world---or it is just a game.
Fiction is not non-fiction and the implications of that are rife.

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 11, 2016, at 12:57 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> I guess it is obvious, but I share Thomas Eckhart's interests. I think limiting one’s response to Pynchon’s work exclusively  to  the apolitical is out of character generally with the inclusiveness  of his  interests and specifically with the high  frequency of political issues in his writing.
>> On Mar 9, 2016, at 3:39 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>> Am 09.03.2016 um 11:11 schrieb ish mailian:
>>
>>> To dismiss March, her truth, as Thomas does, seems easy enough.
>>
>> I don't dismiss March or her truth.
>>
>>> Foucault's de-centering of the author is useful here. So much of the
>>> discussion is about finding out what Pynchon has to say on the truth
>>> of 11 September, but no matter. God is dead. The author is dead.
>
> Pynchon seems to me less interested in telling people definitive truth about anything than  getting them to ask the right questions. So the question for me is not what what P has to say about 9-11; The question is rather why he structured the narratve as he did in regard to 9-11. There is enough of significance in that question to keep us honest about what P regards as legitimate questions about the event itself.
>
> The most powerful draw of this story is that the characters in the story are concerned about real historical events, events that virtually all readers will be more concerned with than the  fictional character issues like the tensions between the sisters.   This disagreement between sisters is not the fulcrum of literary character development; it is about why we might disagree and where those disagreements will lead us- about whose questions will be heard and whose will be silenced.  It is  about national character development and it really does matter if anything at all matters.
>>
>> I thought I had made that clear: I am not so much interested in what Pynchon's truth about 9/11 is, although I speculated about this (note that I prudently used "the implied author" instead of "Pynchon") but in how the event is reflected in the novel and perceived by the novel's characters. I am also interested in Pynchon's sources.
>
> Because P brings so much conspiracy material into his work, knowing his sources for this is meaningful.
>>
>> Mainly, however, I wish to argue for a closer look at Pynchon's deep politics, at his use of conspiracy theory not only with a view to religious, philosphical or psychological aspects or for associative purposes, although he does all that, but with regard to actual or possible conspiracies in the real world -- as he did in VL with Iran-Contra which, of course, was an actual conspiracy reaching up to the White House, and which is a central aspect of the novel.
>>
>> Insofar as Roland Barthes' catchphrase "the death of the author" means that an author can never be in complete control of her/his text and its meanings --  d'accord, naturellement.
>>
>>> That the sisters disagree about the truth of 11 September is not
>>> caused by the event or the truth of it.
>>
>> As I read it, Pynchon is juxtaposing different attitudes to the event. The disagreement is caused by Maxine expressing doubts about the official narrative, while her sister wants to rally behind the flag and implies that Maxine's doubts make her a traitor to the country. I don't think it can be denied that this is first and foremost political, i.e. primarily related to the event and its possible interpretations, and not merely an illustration of the kind of relationship Brooke and Maxine have.
>
>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l