{"id":11,"date":"2005-09-05T13:14:03","date_gmt":"2005-09-05T17:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/05\/more-on-the-ultimate-truth\/"},"modified":"2005-09-05T13:14:03","modified_gmt":"2005-09-05T17:14:03","slug":"more-on-the-ultimate-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/05\/more-on-the-ultimate-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"More on the ultimate truth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\tPynchon foreshadows the novel\u2019s ending at quite literally the middle of the book:  \u201cOedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow be too bright for her memory to hold\u201d (76).  Indeed this is how the novel ends, although we as the reader don\u2019t know how this whole episode in Oedipa\u2019s life actually ends (supposing there\u2019s a distinction).  This passage points to the pastiche element of postmodernism, the \u201ccomplied memories of clues, announcements, [and] intimations,\u201d as well as to the elusiveness of central truth:  if the \u201ccentral truth\u201d is too bright for Oedipa\u2019s memory to hold, it\u2019s also too bright for ours as the reader, because Pynchon doesn\u2019t present the \u201ccentral truth\u201d to us either.  At first I considered whether Pynchon is just posturing:  is there some real \u201ccentral truth\u201d that he is just hinting at but not revealing?  Or is this just a convenient and deceptive way of hiding the fact that he doesn\u2019t have a \u201ccentral truth\u201d at all?  Or, better yet, perhaps there is no \u201ccentral truth\u201d for him to have and he\u2019s bluffing, which is the best answer I could come up with.  The excerpt is a summary of Oedipa\u2019s thoughts, not necessarily Pynchon\u2019s or the narrator\u2019s; therefore Pynchon isn\u2019t necessarily suggesting there is a \u201ccentral truth.\u201d  The novel, for me, draws a parallel to Camus\u2019 <em>The Outsider<\/em> in that it seems to be saying there is no point trying to impose reason on an unreasonable universe.  When Oedipa tries to discover the \u201ccentral truth\u201d behind Pierce\u2019s business dealings, it becomes one big farce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pynchon foreshadows the novel\u2019s ending at quite literally the middle of the book: \u201cOedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow be too bright for her &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/2005\/09\/05\/more-on-the-ultimate-truth\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">More on the ultimate truth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}