a metaphor.... but for whom?

[Dee Kilroy]

Fair do.  Maxine fails to break on through, too.  But the failure in Max's
quest is ameliorated by her participation in Life, via family, compassion
for the enemy, etc.  Her participation is, nominally, an act of
resistance.  Oed doesn't resist.  Can a character in a fiction,
particularly one as rich and as vast as this place, resist?

"This is America, you live in it, you let it happen."

On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:48 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>