a metaphor.... but for whom?

[rich]

Other Pynchon characters exhibit that break-on-through fails: DL, Mason and
Tchitcherine come to mind, e.g.

rich

On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 11:13 PM Dee Kilroy <deadendkid76 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Heyo, friends.  Fancy meeting you-all fancy pants again.
>
> Couple months back I finished my annual re-read of CoL49.  Chased it w/
> Bleeding Edge (another annual habit), then decided what the hell, let's
> finish Against The Day, for once, instead of getting a third through &
> drifting out.
>
> One of the things I enjoyed most about previous exposures to ATD was how
> comfy the book is with its metafictional nature.  It accepts itself, which
> is more than can be said for many postmodern texts.  It leans on that fouth
> wall & smiles, goofily, when the wall seems to bend because P knows it
> won't break.  ATD is meta and it's not: because certain of the characters
> seem perfectly aware of their nature-- some of the Chums --and some don't--
> like other Chums.  The self-awareness seems to fluctuate, depending on
> where the reader is in the book, and where the book is in relation to the
> reader.  It all trembles on a very familiar threshold.
>
> Occurred to me, a couple days ago, how THAT is the nature of the epileptic
> Word Oed sought.  That P was writing Oed experiencing his own
> transcendent.taste of existing within the Logosphere.  Seeing himself in
> the grander context of the story that is history, of being writ by, & being
> moved on from, by the Great Finger.  Oed never quite breaks on through, and
> in a curious way, that makes her more honest than many-- hell, most! --of
> P's protrags, doesn't it?  P knew he couldn't write his way free of being
> complicit in this marvelous, terrible thing we're all mired in... and by
> the time of the Crying, Oed knew it, knows it, will know, too.
>
> "She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only
> because there was that high magic to low puns, because DT’s must give
> access to dt’s of spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of
> Antarctic loneliness and fright."
>
> That Sailor could very well have been a Chum, couldn't he.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>