M & D Group Read. Cont.

[David Morris]

I like the "cleaver" example.  Multiple, and even sometimes seemingly
opposite, word meanings are Pynchon's playground.  His play with words
become multifaceted plays of questions.  I love that playground.

David Morris

On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 3:54 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Take a word like 'cleave'. it has two almost opposite meanings.
>
> This duality of meaning is akin to the ironic ambiguity, I'll now call it,
> of meaning so evident throughout so much of M & D,
> with the difference that BOTH meanings at once are usually intended.
>
> And it is not over individual words but over allusive phrases--the words
> alluding to Matthew say: set piece scenes especially, one overt level going
> on and another counter-force layer counterpointing, so to cutely
> metaphorize.
>
> He did it most overtly with V herself by the end of V; he did it so
> overtly with Blicero and the Rocket---
> and not only there in each of these novels---and he showed us it as the
> ambiguous mystery that ends Lot 49..
>
> But in Mason & Dixon TRP does it more throughout than in any other book, I
> suggest.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20180105/93ad22e6/attachment.html>