a metaphor.... but for whom?

[Mark Kohut]

I like that about Maxine and, let's not forget, Oed is by a youthful TRP
learning how to
project a world...Hers (and his) was a quest with the best open-ended
ending ever.
An ending in which open-ended is also a human quest theme, so to say this
lamely....

I.e. we keep always waiting for the answers....

On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 9:59 AM Dee Kilroy <deadendkid76 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>