COL 49 group read CH 6 mid section

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon is an artist....the "direct approach' is almost never art....the 7
types of ambiguity are
erased......a "direct approach' is a dead polemic....

On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 2:40 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 7:53 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >  I suggest Pynchon was very nervous about a direct approach  and that
> > those concerns were well founded. Every student of history knows the
> > dangers of tangling with empires.
> >
>
> You make a good case - I have some elaborate pseudo-biographical points of
> agreement, and a few mild differences
>
>
> In agreement -
>
> Rev’d Cherrycoke in M&D had to ship out after becoming known as a writer of
> pamphlets critical of the Establishment at that time
>
> His career thereafter took a different course, and perhaps his experience
> changed his viewpoint to one more like that AA prayer about learning the
> difference between things he could or couldn’t change.
>
> It’s easy enough, and not immediately dismissable as fallacious, to see
> Cherrycoke’s evolution as an expression - maybe even a recommendation - of
> the author’s “attitude journey”
>
> If so, it’s but one step beyond that
> https://youtu.be/SOJSM46nWwo?si=rk3g2mVjw_p4TYYL
> to imagine that, emboldened by lack of negative consequences, indeed,
> plaudits and dinero, for 49, and an antiwar/counterculture groundswell in
> society up and into the ‘70s, & also steeled in resolution by his friend
> Richard Fariña’s death, GR became a more overt, passionate statement
>
> But then, his alarms set to clanging by the Pulitzer Board’s refusal to
> award GR a prize - and other cultural changes starting to be documented by
> the efforts of writers like Hunter S Thompson - he took a lower profile for
> quite awhile, and no doubt had time to think deeply…while writing VL about
> the ins and outs of the right wing response to, and the roots and shoots
> of, the Movement which Thompson had called “the crest of a high and
> beautiful wave”
>
> By the time M&D came out, having looked at “both sides now” and then some,
> he was seeking a place in the culture like that of Rev’d Cherrycoke.
>
>
> The slight differences I offer are more of emphasis:
>
> Pynchon was never a pamphleteer (afaik) - always consciously a litterateur
>
> As an artist his emphasis would be closer to that William Carlos Williams
> quote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably
> every day for lack of what is found there.
> <
> https://quotefancy.com/quote/39722/William-Carlos-Williams-It-is-difficult-to-get-the-news-from-poems-yet-men-die-miserably
> >
> ”
>
> In addition to any topical references, I want to see broad narrative aims:
> Oedipa’s individuation & blossoming of maturity; the enlargement of her POV
> with a growing awareness of dastardly plots all around, and of other human
> realities besides her own; her twin impulses to pursue the trail, but also
> not to; a truly generous helping of her introspection, served up adroitly
> and sympathetically; & enough real history to serve as a crèche for the
> nativity of the fictive “Tristero y Calavera” which serves to connote
> sadness, the Day of the Dead, the sweet treats of that commemoration, and a
> multitude of reactions to Pierce’s death (and Death in general & also
> personal, “it is Margaret you mourn for”)
>
> Going yet one step beyond that, speculatively, the author at this point in
> his career having attempted marriage once - could he in Oedipa be trying to
> imagine a more compatible woman with a sensibility akin to his? If we liken
> novels to stamps, a woman who attends an auction of those items would be
> like a literary agent in some respects
>
> I find it pleasing so to muse - ymmv
>
> And in conclusion:
>
> > On Jul 30, 2024, at 4:52 PM, Hübschräuber <huebschraeuber at protonmail.com
> >
> wrote:
>
>
> > > More to the point perhaps, whether invented or not, this is some
> > marvelous writing
>
>
>
> Yes indeedy!
>
> >
> --
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>