{"id":83,"date":"2009-02-02T12:33:25","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T17:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=83"},"modified":"2009-02-02T12:33:25","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T17:33:25","slug":"an-unimaginative-use-of-tapioca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"An Unimaginative Use of Tapioca."},"content":{"rendered":"

I quite like Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>. The breathless narrative and endless lists of little fiddly things-stamps, letters, bits of graffiti-are quite appealing. Moving through the book gives me a sense of gradually sliding out of control, the slow development of a paranoia in which one starts to distrust one’s own perceptions when it begins to seem that the scheme (or swindle) that one is caught in is ultimately too big to see as a coherent whole. In that sense it reminds me of Ellis’ Glamorama <\/em>at the point where even mundane objects-confetti, a black hat, a stick-on tattoo-become objects of dread and signals of a large system. The protagonist’s perception becomes more and more faulty as objects-photographs, pornographic videos-are manipulated to create a “reality” that is false but can’t be argued with.<\/p>\n

Michael Holquist makes some interesting points in his “Whodunit and Other Question.” I find his inclusion of Poe in the canon of detective stories very fascinatingl; I wonder if he would also admit H.P. Lovecraft into the same group? But the question is, what does this have to do with postmodernism and Pynchon? Earlier we spoke about whether postmodernism was a break from modernism or a continuation (evolution?) of modernism. Holquist writes that “post-modernism…can best be understood as springing from a different view of man, and therefore a different view of art from that which obtained in Modernism” (Holquist 147). I suppose this can be taken as Holquist’s assertion that postmodernism is more of a break with moderning (or a perspective shift) than a continuation. Holquist goes on to say that postmodernism is “about things, not people” and mentions the 1930s “murder classics” by Wheatley and Links and The Voyeur<\/em> as examples. I suppose an argument could be made for Pynchon’s novella that links it with Holquist’s argument, using the obsessive minutiae of objects in the book.<\/p>\n

One thing that stood out for me particularly is the gradual revelation of how enmeshed Oedipa is in the unfathomable plan of Inverarity’s, the feeling that she cannot figure it out because she cannot get outside of it enough to do so, of being caught in a possibly malevolent system. The “clues” which we might expect to help us start unraveling the mystery only serve to further complicate matters. There is a sort of “meta” feeling I get when reading this novella and making connections to things mentioned in the novel with things outside of the novel, then eventually feeling as though I’m becoming paranoid along with Oedipa (for example-Maxwell’s Demon and “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” from the fictionalized biopic of a character based on David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine<\/em>. http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L1y_PRuq7x0<\/a>). The novella greatly puts me in mind of China Mieville’s short story “The Go-Between” from Looking For Jake, <\/em>and Holquist’s article also brings Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald”-really a stylistic mash-up-from Fragile Things<\/em> to mind.<\/p>\n

Holquist and Fredric Jameson both seem to put the burgeoning of postmodernism at roughly the end of the 1950s\/beginning of the 1960s. Jameson also raises the question of whether postmodernism should be viewed as a break or a continuation of modernism, although from what I understand he presents both positions as plausible but mentions that the latter view does not “take into account the social position of the older modernism” (Jameson 56). Jameson also makes an interesting assertion that postmodern global culture\u00a0 in the “superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world” (Jameson 57). Given that we have recently seen a rather dramatic re-structuring of the existing economic system and are poised at the brink of an unprecendented level of reorganization of the American economic system in particular, does this alter Jameson’s argument at all? Or are these changes rather superficial? Or is this possibly the sign that we are actually moving into the post-postmodern era? I do wonder about Jameson’s claim on page 57 that the “offensive features” of postmodernism have become institutionalized-I suppose he’s right-but I don’t consider a strong reaction to something an indication that the point has been missed; I don’t think the two positions have to be occupied simultaneously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I quite like Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. The breathless narrative and endless lists of little fiddly things-stamps, letters, bits of graffiti-are quite appealing. Moving through the book gives me a sense of gradually sliding out of control, the slow development of a paranoia in which one starts to distrust one’s own perceptions when … Continue reading An Unimaginative Use of Tapioca.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,120,35],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-jameson","tag-pynchon","tag-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}