Binarism and Indeterminacy in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon
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BINARISM AND INDETERMINACY IN THE NOVELS OF THOMAS PYNCHON Shaun Irlam University of Cape Town A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of Cape Town for the Degree of Master of Arts October 1983 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town ABSTRACT I attempt in this thesis, to graft together a close critical, and predominantly thematic, reading of Thomas Pynchon's novels with selected issues treated in the work of Jacques Derrida on philosophy and textuality, illustrating how this work demands the revision and interrogation of several major critical issues, concepts, dualisms and presuppositions. The thesis consists of an Introduction which sets forth a brief rationale for the graft described above, followed by a short and unavoid ably inadequate synopsis of Derrida's work with a brief review and explication of those of his 'concepts' which play an important role in my reading of Pynchon's texts. The Introduction is succeeded by three lengthy chapters in which I discuss, more or less separately, each of Pynchon's three novels to date. These are V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49, (1966) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and I discuss them in the order of their appearance, devoting a chapter to each. I attempt to treat different but related issues, preoccu pations, themes and tropes in each of the novels to avoid repeating myself, engaging the apparatuses derived from Derrida's writing where deemed strategic and instructive. I suggest moreover, that several of the issues examined apropos the novel under consideration in any one chapter apply mutandis rnutandi to the other novels. Each chapter therefore to some extent conducts a reading of the novels which it does not treat directly. Finally, supervising these separate chapters is a sustained focus on the epistemology of binarism and digitalism, and the conceptual dualisms which structure and inform major portions of the thematic and rhetorical dimensions of the novels. This focus is conjoined with a periodic attention to certain semantic devices and effects which register the limitations and inadequacy of the extensive dualistic framework of the texts and which motivate the questions of polysemy and semantic indeterminacy. The thesis concludes with a Bibliography and a summary Epilogue which seeks to assess briefly the 'achievement' of Pynchon's writing. * * * * CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abbreviations V INTRODUCTION JACQUES DERRIDA AND DECONSTRUCTION 23 CHAPTER ONE v. 43 TWO SHORT STORIES 47 THE DOCTRINES AND INFLUENCE OF HENRY ADA.MS 54 "U.S.S. SCAFFOLD" : THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT INV. 60 STRUCTURE AND SUPPLEMENTARITY 62 TOWARDS A STRATEGY OF INTERPRETATION 64 TRACING CO-ORDINATES : The Animate and the Inanimate 66 ANIMATE/INANIM.~TE AND DECLINE The Global Pattern 68 ANIMATE/INANIMATE AND DECLINE EXTENSIONS 72 THE DREAM OF ORDER The Imperial Strategy 74 THE DREAM OF ORDER Colonialism 76 THE DREAM OF ORDER Fetishism 80 THE DANCE OF DEATH 84 THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF THE TOUR: Tripping through Baedekerland 88 TOURISM: FIGURAL TRANSFORMATIONS 92 TOURISM AND ITERABLE FORM: Ritual, Convention and Game 95 ii TRANSFORM.Z'\TIONS OF TOURISM : Whole Sick Crews 99 THE ANIMATE AND INANIMATE REVISITED 104 STENCIL AND PROFANE: The Hothouse and the Street 108 Benny Profane and the Street 108 Herbert Stencil and the Quest for V. 11 6 V. - "not who, but what: what is she" 122 THE DISSEMINATION OF V. 130 The Aporia of Vheissu 132 SOME CONCLUDING POSTSCRIPTS 143 CHAPTER TwO THE CRYING OF LOT 49 148 SYNOPSIS AND SITUATION : A Brief Introduction 150 MAJOR RHETORICAL FRAMEWORKS 152 THE SITUATION OF MRS. MAAS 157 TWO PARABOLIC PREAMBLES : Cultural Allegories 159 1. Mucho's Car Lot 159 2. Rapunzel's Tower 1 63 TWO TROPOLOGICAL STRP.TEGIES 1 68 FIGURAL NETWORKS Maxwell's Demon 170 FIGURAL NETWORKS Religion and Mysticism 1 71 THE SACRED TRISTERO: Mendelson's Thesis Considered 175 FIGURAL NETWORKS : The Transformations of Insulation 180 SPATIAL CO-ORDINATES AND THEMES OF CENTRISM 185 SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS Same and Other 193 SPATIAL TRANSFORMATIONS U.S. Mail and Tristero 194 "THE SHRINK FLIPS" : The Unconscious and Transformations of the 200 Spatial Dichotomy iii THE 'PLACE' OF THE TRISTERO AND SOCIO-SYMBOLIC ORDER 203 SYMBOLIC ORDER AND THE ODDS OF THE TRISTERO: One and the Double 209 Chance and Transformations of the Double 213 NOSTALGIA FOR PRESENCE AND THE 'LOSS' OF MEANING 21 6 THE VOICE OF PHONOCENTRISM AND THE MUTE SIGNS OF THE TRISTERO 225 THE UNDECIDABLE TRISTERO AND BLURRED BOUNDARIES 231 THE STYLE AND SYNTAX OF UNCERTAINTY 2 3 6 THE TROPE OF 'WRITING' or AMERICA AS TEXT 243 CHAPTER THREE GRAVITY I S RAINBOW 258 THE ALLEGORICAL "OVERLAY" 263 ·~~O PARABOLIC PREAMBLES 274 DE\7ELOPING THE PICTURE : "black-and-white bad news" 2 81 NECROPOLICY : "wherever the enterprise is systematic death" 288 POINTSMAN/ANTIPOINTSMAN : An Epistemological Allegory 301 DISSECTING THE CREATION 316 THE ART OF REIFICATION 323 "THE VIOLENCE OF REPRESSION" 3 2 7 "ELITE AND PRETERITE, WE MOVE THROUGH A COSMIC DESIGN OF DARKNESS 332 AND LIGHT" THE HYPERBOLE OF THE WAR 3 3 7 NOTES FROM THE ZONE : "Forget frontiers now. Forget subdivisions. 342 There aren't any" Zonal Discourses 353 LINES OF DISSEMINATION 3 68 ALLEGORY REVISITED 381 E?ILOGUE 388 BIBLIOGRAPHY 396 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Professor J.M. Coetzee for vigilant, patient and informed supervision; Julia Saville for her constant help and humour; and my mother, Moira Irlam, for preparing the final typescript. ~;cuth l\fric,111 Cun1ic:i:l for J·:nr_(Jj_sh Fducat:ic,:1 Un:Lvc:r:-:;ity V ABBREVIATIONS In the interests of reducing an already extensive series of footnotes, frequently cited texts are identified by the appropriate abbreviations and the relevant page number. Diss. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: Athlone Press, 1981). OG Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G.C. Spivak (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, rpt. 1978). GR Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (London: Picador, 1975 rpt. 1978). Lot 49 All references to The Crying of Lot 49 are identified by two unmarked page references divided by a slash, e.g. (1/5), indicating the two most widely available editions, respectively: Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (New York: Bantam Books, 1967 rpt. 1978); Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (London: Picador, 1979). V. Thomas Pynchon, V. (London: Picador, 1975, rpt. 1978). INTRODUCTION The biographical Thomas Pynchon, born 1937, remains an elusive and enigmatic figure. By the same token his fiction, because of its dazzling spectrum of narrative modes, tones, voices and styles behind which the 'real' Thomas Pynchon vanishes, because of its extraordinary erudition, overwhelming allusive breadth, conceptual complexity and sustained figural deformation, whose organisation endeavours to defy rational, logical and 'realistic' "arrangements" and ultimately deny any moment of 'transcendental meaning', continues to elude critical accounts which inevitably attempt to locate a centre, extract 'meaning' or in some way impose a totalizing order or control upon the text. Several critics have already offered a diversity of 'meanings' and often highly instructive and persuasive inter pretations for the three novels, as well as a number of the short stories; it remains satisfying to witness Pynchon's fictions eluding the sum of these critical exegeses. This point must serve as a precaution that this thesis too, unable to recognize its own prejudices and presuppositions, will inevitably behave as if its perspective were (for the duration) totalizing, whilst succumbing to the same failure to deal exhaustively with Pynchon's texts and a related inability to be master of the language over which it maintains the illusion of control. However, by trying to recognize and take account of the mechanisms by which we dissemble mastery, and by trying to understand the necessary persistence of these appearances in critical discourse, we perhaps begin to dismantle our illusions. I must ask my reader to judge whether my thesis observes this premise. It is my aim in this thesis to undertake a close critical reading of Thomas Pynchon's fictions, dealing primarily with his three novels: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and focussing particularly on structural and thematic binarism and its 3 limitations in conjunction with, and in relation to, the motif of semantic indeterminacy. I attempt to locate this indeterminate motif in each novel and indicate its role, status and effect in the text; this is over- simplification, particularly with respect to Gravity's Rainbow. My analysis of binarism and indeterminacy in Pynchon's novels will be shaped by two major considerations which I will discuss in this introduction, rendering it perforce dense with quotation. Firstly, guided by trends of consensus and dissension amongst Pynchon's critics, I am encouraged to treat his novels as 'plurisignificant', open networks and consider the question of semantic indeterminacy. I trace briefly the area of consensus, setting aside the variety of inferences and conclusions it produces. An early commentator on y_. concludes, "Even the title V. is cryptographic. Available to all interpretations, it is 1 answerable to none." This sentiment sets the tenor of the consensus, "Pynchon combines the intricacy of his plotting with a symbolist openness to all possible elements suggested by the letter 'V', thereby greatly 2 adding to the confusing quality of his book." Another writes, "If V. can mean everything it means nothing 113 and again, "At the end author and protagonists alike are left with the certainty that V.