BtZ42 Pynchon. How allegorical a writer is he?

[ish mailian]

Thanks  Mark. The word is Greek, allegoria, double talk, or to speak
with double meaning or speaking otherwise. And, speaking of double
talk, Pynchon writes of its uses and abuses in his Foreword to
Orwell;s _1984_.

P says that _1984_ may have been a victim of the success of Orwell's
allegory, _Animal Farm_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory, so....), and
that readers, in 49 and into the Red Scare misread _1984_ as an
allegory, as an anti-communist tract.

In many ways, _Vineland_, Pynchon most allegorical political satire
suffers from the same causes, GR (not an allegorical work, though it
includes much allegory)  and the "Reagan Revolution." Though, of
course, and perhaps fittingly, the cause and effect are reversed, as
VL is publish after GR, while AF is publish before 84.

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 4:57 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/05/an_allegory_is_not_the_same_as_a_metaphor_in_praise_of_the_medieval_literary.html
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