The Scanty Plot: Orwell, Pynchon and the Poetics of Paranoia

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The "Scanty Plot": Orwell, Pynchon, and the Poetics of ParanoiaAuthor(s): Aaron S. RosenfeldSource: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Winter, 2004), pp. 337-367Published by: Hofstra UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4149267Accessed: 05-01-2016 08:35 UTC

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2/32

The

"Scanty

Plot":

Orwell,

Pynchon,

and the

Poetics

of

Paranoia

AaronS.

Rosenfeld

In truth the

prison,

nto which

we

doom

Ourselves,

no

prison

is;

and hence for

me,

In

sundry

moods,

'twas

pastime

to

be bound

Within

the

Sonnet's

cantyplot

of

ground.

-Wordsworth

(199)

Not

leastamong the prescientaspectsof GeorgeOrwell's 1984 is its

articulation f a

paranoia

hat s at once dismaland

thrilling.

f

today

para-

noia'sdistinctive

ensibility-its

blend

of

grandiosity

and

abjection-has

become a

commonplace

of the modern

novel,

with writers rom

Pynchon

to

DeLillo to Amis

riffing

on the

suspicion

that the world

might

be

a

setup,

Orwell's

version

lays

the

groundwork

or their sense of

paranoia's

possibilities.

n this

essay,

treatthe

paranoia

of

1984 as more than

ust

a

topical

thematics

hat reacts o the

political

conditionsof Orwell's

ime;

I

arguethat the novelalsoresponds o the condition of the literature f his

time.

By looking

at 1984 and

then,

briefly,

Thomas

Pynchon's

The

Crying

of

Lot

49

as

counterpoint,

I

pose

Orwell's

paranoidpoetics

as

an

effort

to

mediate between

competing

literary

discourses

and their attendant

models of

subjectivity.

That Orwell

explicitly

intended 1984

to address

opical political

realities

has

been

well documented.'

In a

letter

to FrancisA. Henson

in

June

1949,

commenting

on the

germ

of

the

novel,

he

wrote:

"totalitarian

ideashave takenrootin the minds of intellectuals verywhere, ndI have

tried to draw

hese ideas out to their

logical

consequences"

Howe

287).

Following

along

these

lines,

John

Atkins,

n an

early response

to

1984,

Twentieth-Century

iterature

0.4

Winter 2004 337


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3/32

Aaron S.

Rosenfeld

claimedhat

heworldof 1984 s"not

magination

t allbuta

painstaking

pursuit

f

existing

endencieso what

appear

ogical

conclusions"

252).

Similarly,

rving

Howe,

a

chimpion

of the

work,

wrote hat he"last

hing

Orwellcaredabout,he last hinghe shouldhavecaredaboutwhen he

wrote 1984

s literature"

322).2

uchstatementssthese

ay

the

ground-

workfor

reading

1984

in

termsof its

clear-sightedness,

ts evocation f

"history

s

nightmare"

the

title

of Howe's

article),

ather han

n

terms

of

the work's

iterary ualities.

But it is not

only

Orwell's

isceral evulsion t totalitarian

olitics

that

shapes

his critical

esponse:

t is also 1984's

rejection

f novelistic

conventions. or

example,

while Howe calls1984 a "remarkable"ook

(321),he also uggestshat t doesnot meettherequirementsf the novel

as

genre:

It is

not,

I

suppose,

eally

novel,

or at least t doesnot

satisfy

those

expectations

e havecome to have

with

regard

o the

novel-expectations

hatare

mainly

he

heritage

f nineteenth

century

omanticism

ith its stress

pon

ndividualonscious-

ness,

psychological

nalysis

nd

the

study

of

intimate elations.

(321)

Howe continues:Orwell as

magined

world

n

whichthe

self,

what-

eversubterraneanxistence t

mightmanage

o eke

out,

is no

longer

a

significant

alue,

ot evena value o be violated"

322).

Herehe

gestures

toward

possibility

or

reading

1984

within,

rather

hanoutside

of,

the

tradition: rwell's

violation"f the

notion

of

self s not

simply

viola-

tion of an a

priori

assumption

bout he nature f the

human;

t is the

violationof the self

as

literary

ategory,

s a

quantity

erived

hrough

literaturendwithinthe dynamic rocess f narrativeevelopment.n

this

sense,

f

1984 is

only

dubiously

iteraturenstead f

politics,

Orwell

at the

very

eastcares

nough

o

speak

o literaturend

the noveltradi-

tion.What hen is the

relationship

etween1984 and

iterature,nd,

by

extension,

ts

literary eriod?

We

mightbeginby considering

he climaxof the novel.The climax

appears

o be

the scene n

Room

101,

whereWinston

s introduced

o

his

greatest

ear,

he rats. Do it to

Julia "

e cries

190),

proving

hat ove

is no match ortorture,nd hat heperfectedotalitariantate scapable

of

erasing

he last

vestige

of

humanity.

ut we

might

offer

a

different

climactic scene.

Immediately

before his

capture,

Winston stands in front

338




4/32

Orwell,

ynchon,

nd

hePoetics

f

Paranoia

of a

picture

on the wallof

his

hideaway.

We

arethe

dead,"

e

says.

He

is

shockedwhen

"You

are

the

dead"

s

repeated

ack

o

him,

the voice

coming

rombehind he

picture

147).The

cene

continues:

"Now

they

can

see

us,"

aid

ulia.

"Now we cansee

you,"

aid he

voice....

"Thehouse

s

surrounded,"

aidWinston.

"Thehouse s

surrounded,"

aid

he voice.

(148)

Winston tillhas

yet

to

be

turned

nside ut

and

reconstituted

s

an

empty

shell,

a

good

citizenof Oceania. ut

while

the annihilationf Winston

the character

as

yet

to

come,

here we see the calculated nnihilation

of Orwell's ovel.A text thatonceincludedmultiple oicescontending

with one another

o

define hemselvesndthe fictivereal

collapses

nto

monologicity.The

estof the novelwill be taken

up

withan

nterrogation

in

whichone

party

lready

nows

he

answers,

nd n

which he ultimate

confession

s

a fait

accompli.

s

Howe

suggests,

t

is the end of

character

as

a

category

n

possession

f

agency,nteriority,

ssence--in

hort,

n

pos-

session f itself.ButWinston'snd is not the

starting

oint

of the

novel,

it is the conclusion.

f

Winston

begins

as

a

familiar haracter-thehero

of a questromance-he endsasquiteanother:nenvironmentalixture.

Winston'swallscannot tand

n

the face of

O'Brien's ssault n

behalf

of

Big

Brother nd he

Party.

We hall

queeze

ou

empty,

nd henwe

shall

ill

you

with

ourselves,"

'Brien

says

170).

With this"violation"

Orwell's ovel

stages

an

anxious,

eflexive

ncounternot

just

with

the

politics

of the

day

butalsowith

specificallyiterary

modelsof

represent-

ing

the

subject.

As

the

voice

in

the

picture

mirrors

ack

o Winstonhis

own

words,

it is botha momentof supremeomanticranscendencendof intense

paranoia,

he actionwithinthe fictivereal

reproducing logic

of com-

plete adequation

etween nsideand outsideworlds. t

is

the

pathetic

fallacy

made

iteral-Winston's

houghts

eally

do

appear

n

the

world,

are

ndistinguishable

rom

t.The

hallmarks

f

paranoia-its

nsistence

n

reading

nto a

random,

ndifferent orlda

motivated,

oherent

arrative;

its

claimof

grandiosity

or the

object

of

aggression;

ts

reduction

f the

worldto

a

stable

binary

n

which all

signs

aketheir

meaning

hrough

theirrelationo theparanoid-arequiteexplicitly endered s the basis

of the novel's

"plot."

aranoia

ecomes,

n

effect,

he

poetic

principle

governing

984.3

339




5/32


6/32

Orwell,

ynchon,

nd he

Poetics f

Paranoia

Specifically,

rwell

uses

paranoia

o

bridge

ompeting

omantic

nd

modernist

models f the

subject.

He

exaggerates

oth

romanticism's

ense

of

the

expansive

ubject

nd

modernism's

enseof

the

subject

uspended

withina

complex

web of

signs.8

he

paranoia

f thenovel s a

symptom

of the

contact

one

wherethe

romantic

ubject

who

would

have

signs

disappear

nto

immanence o

reveal

he

"true

subject"

s

strandedn

a

modernistworld

made

up

of

scattered

extual

ragments,

here im-

manencewill

come

not in

the

disappearance

f

signs

but in

theirfull

"capture"

f the

subject.

Orwell

pins

the

displaced

omantic

ubject

n

text,

effecting

oth

repair

nd

stabilization.9

hat

s

beyond

extuality

s

reduced

o an

erratum:

Youare

a flaw n

the

pattern,

Winston.You re

a stain hatmustbe

wiped

out"

169),

O'Brien

ays.

Wemake hebrain

perfect

eforewe

blow t

out."

Orwell's

aranoid

ortrayal

oth

ndulges

such an

aesthetic nd

evokes

horrorat

the loss

of

those

elements

hat

might

escape

he

net

of

legibility.

Peter

Knight,

n

his

discussion f

the

connectedness

f

seemingly

random

vents n

DeLillo's

Underworld,

akesa

suggestive

bservation

with

regard

o

paranoia's

apacity

or

connecting

vents.

He

notes

that

"taken

ndividually,

any

of

these

connections re

perhaps

o

more

han

the thematic onstructionf a well-composedworkof fiction"

829)

and

draws

ttention

o the

fact

that

novels

already

rivilege

a

kind of

"connectedness"

n

reading.

his

association ith

paranoia

s not

just

metaphorical.

n

fact,

he

cognitive

malfunction

hat

ies at

the

heartof

paranoia

s

located n

the

perception

f

connectedness,

n

this

most

basic

act

of"fiction."n

other

words,

aranoia

s

the act

of

reading

he

world

as f

it were

a

book.And

moreover,

s

f

it

werea

bad

book:

he

paranoid,

insisting

n an

excessive

orrespondence

etween

igns

and

hings,

efuses

theloosersignificationf themetaphororunambiguousertainty.10n

this

sense,

aranoid

ogic

is

instrumental

ather

han

metaphorical,

ath-

ematical

ather han

poetic.

The

paranoid

remise

stablishes

coherent

framework

or

organizing

he

multiplication

f

manifestations.t is a

kind

of

excessive

ormalization,

metastatic

rganization

f

materialhat

points

toward

single

hidden

onclusion,

he

threat

o

autonomy."

Just

as the

struggle

or

autonomy

becomesa

structuring

rinciple

of the

paranoid's

ental

organization,

he

paranoid

ext

both

thematizes

thethreat o autonomy ndenacts t at theformalevel.Threeelements

in

particular

tructure

his

threatwithin

the

"paranoid

tyle":

aranoia's

intensity

of

investment in

its

story;

paranoid

identification

(projective

341




7/32

Aaron S. Rosenfeld

identification);

and

the

persistence

of the

paranoid premise.

With

regard

to

the

first,

at

the

simplest

level we notice

paranoia

when an

"objective"

view

of events is

overwhelmed

by

the

interpretive

gestures

of the

teller.

With

regard

to the

second,

paranoid

identification establishes

equiva-

lency

between

the

paranoid

and his

persecutor.

A

paranoid

structure

assays

reconstruction

of the

ego

on an

exaggerated,

delusional

scale,

the

paranoid

identifying

himself with

the more

grandiose

object

of both

his

terror and

his love.12With

regard

to the

third,

paranoid logic

relies on its

initial

premise

of

persecution

in order to establish

its claims. Once

such a

conclusion

is

presumed,

the

events take on

significance

in

relation

to each

other

in what

appears

to

be a causal

sequence

by

virtue of

their

capacity

to

prove

this

prior

conclusion. Taken

together

and

singly,

these

opera-

tions

are all

predicated

on

asserting

both

autonomy

and

authority

over

the text.

To be

paranoid

is to be the

last and best reader

of the

text,

the

one

for whom

the text is written.When

the

paranoid

narrative structure

is absorbed

into the

text,

characters

within the fictive

real are invited

to

recognize

the world

they

inhabit as constructed

within the

protocols

of

textuality.

Although,

as

Knight's

comment

suggests,

each of

the above

operations

has an

analogue

in familiar behaviors of reading-we attribute motive

to

authors;

we

identify

with

characters;

we

partake

of the

page-bound

intelligibility

of fictive worlds

(and

"lose" ourselves

in

them)-paranoia

is distinct

in

the

degree

of its investment

in this

role.What

distinguishes

paranoia

from

a reasonable

suspiciousness

is

ultimately

not whether

the

threat

is

true,

but the

kind of

gratification

the

paranoid

takes

in

the

threat.

Though

the

paranoid

is an active

reader,

he or she also

has an investment

in

being

the

passive

object

of

reading.

The

projective quality

of

paranoia

has a tendency to reverse the readerly gaze. Imagine the traveler who

stands on a

hill and

gazes

out at

the

utopian, legible

city-paranoia

re-

verses the vector

of

agency

so that

the

paranoid

stands

in the middle while

the world

gazes

back.13

Autonomy

is asserted

through

the

adoption

of two

complementary

grandiose

positions:

the

paranoid

occupies

a

privileged

relationship

to the

text of the world

both as the lone

reader of

signs

and

as the

object implicated

in

or

by

them.

Just

as

the

paranoid

shuttles back

and

forth between the

positions

of

the readerand the read,the paranoid narrativeshuttles between abjection

and

grandiosity

for its

protagonists.

This simultaneous

decentering

and

valorization of

subjectivity

within

the confines

of a

systematic

textuality

342




8/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

nd he Poetics f Paranoia

echoes

the modernist

project.Theapocalyptic

ense

that Frank

Kermode

identifies

as

part

of

the modern

sensibility

dovetailsn

paranoia

with what

he refers o

as the

"formal

desperation"

f the

Joyce/Proust/Kafka/Musil

brandof modernism

(10).

Modernism shifts the balanceof inflection

between the word

and

the world

in

favor of the

word,

substituting

he

dream

of a

formally

coherent ext for the

expectation

of coherentcharac-

ter,

and thus

opens

the door

to

the enforced

unities

of

paranoid eading.

As

modernism

morphs

into

postmodernism,

we see an even

more

explicit portrayal

f

form and an even

greater

emphasis

on the textual

nature

of

subjectivity.14 night argues

that

in

a world

where

"every-

thing

is

connected

but

nothing

adds

up"

(823),

more,

not less

paranoia

is

required.

Many

critics,

ncluding

the ones noted above,have

explored

how

contemporary

writers

ike

Pynchon,Kathy

Acker,

Martin

Amis,

and

Don DeLillo

exploit paranoia

as

a

pervasive

ultural heme within what

O'Donnell

calls the

"complicitous

relationbetween

postmodernity

and

paranoia"

vii).

O'Donnell

argues

hat texts

by

writers ike

Pynchon

and

Acker"chart he

peregrinations

f

fluid,

postmodern

dentities

operating

within

increasingly omplex

and

encroachingdisciplinary

matrices"

23).

In

other

words,

f

modernism

requiresparanoidreading

to make sense

of the world text,postmodernismposes paranoiano longeras a buttress

against ragmentation

ut

as

its

complement,

as a

defense

against

he en-

forced hierarchies f modernist

reading.15

Within

this

account

of

paranoia's

ise,

Orwell's ext

is

a

harbinger

f

things

to

come.

In what

follows

I will

tracesome of the formsand

figures

that

shape

the

"familiar

oncept

of

subjectivity"

hat Orwell inheritsand

show how

paranoiaregisters

moments

of

change

within it.

I

will

also

suggest

some of the

ways

in

which

postmodern

paranoia

s distinct rom

modernistand romanticversions.

While Orwell shared

or much

of

his careera historical

tage

with various

incarnations

f the modernist

movement,

his

relationship

o modernismas

an

aesthetic

s

contentious.

Most

striking

s his sense of the

group

of

writ-

ers

now

classed

under the rubric

of"modernism"-Joyce,

Eliot, Pound,

Lawrence, tc.-as havingneglecteda historical ense of purpose n their

writing.

In

"Inside

the

Whale"

he writes of them:"Our

eyes

are directed

to

Rome,

to

Byzantium,

to

Montparnasse,

to

Mexico,

to the

Etruscans,

343




9/32


10/32

Orwell,

ynchon,

nd hePoetics

f

Paranoia

condemnedo

submit o the

"world-process"

s t

is,

to

"simply

ccept

t,

endure

t,

record

t"

(1:

526).

If

language

s

to

be

recovered,

t

will be via

individualruths hataddresshe collective

eality;

ut,

n

keeping

with

Orwell'siercedefense f theindividual,uch ruthsmust

necessarily

e

lonely

truths,

erived rom

ingular

erceptions,

f

they

are o

be valid.

Critics uchas KeithAlldritt

o

so

far

as

to find

the

symbolism,

l-

lusiveness,

ndhistorical oncernof 1984 consistent ith the modernist

project.

At

the same

ime,

Alldritt eadsOrwellas

a

failed

ymbolist,

e-

turning

o

"allegorical

able

and

utopia

.. forms hatweremoreresistant

to the

strong

nfluences

fJoyce,

Proust,

nd D. H. Lawrence"

4).

He

argues

hatthis

struggle

s

allegorized

n

1984,

the novela

"projection

anda criticism f the tendencies f the specificallyiterary rthodoxy

of

the

time,"

with O'Briena "caricaturef certain

ymbolist

ttitudes"

(158-59).16

Meanwhile,

f

Orwell s "interestedess

n

temperament

han

milieu"

21),

he is

also

inkedwith the naturalist

radition

f

Gissing

nd

Wells,

he sametradition hat

Virginia

Woolf

attacks

n her

modernist

manifesto Mr.Bennett ndMrs.

Brown.""17

f,

ike

Wells,

Orwell'snterest

lies

as

muchwith

setting

swith

character,

ike

Eliot

he alsoseesa world

constructed

y language.

Thisaestheticonundrumecomes source f 1984'sownversion f

passivity.

inston

s

caught

etween he

degenerateopular

iteraturehat

Orwell o

despises,

mbodied

n

the mechanical

opular

ulture

roduced

by

the

Party,

ndan aesthetic f

pure

anguage

hathasno connection o

the

world,

mbodied

n

the Inner

Party's

anguage

ames.The

ndividual

subject

or

Orwell s

already

angerously

ied

up

in

signifying

ystems

hat

threaten o overwhelm

gency. hrough

his

essays,

memoirs,

nd other

novelswe see Orwell

truggling

o

definea notion

of

the

subject

hates-

capesrom hevagariesf discourse.n hisfamous ssay Politics nd he

English

Language,"

rwellconceives

f debased

anguage

s thatwhich

is

imposed

rom"outside"atherhan

beinggenerated

rom"inside"he

subject's

wn

perceptions. choing

Daniel

Paul

Schreber,

ho writesof

"miracled

irds"

hat

repeat

'meaninglesshrases

hat

they

have earnt

by

heart' ndthat

havebeen

crammed

nto

them"'

qtd.

n

Freud,

Three

Case

Histories

11),

Orwell

writes:

[Ready-made

hrases]

ill

construct

your

sentences

or

you-even

think

your

thoughts

or

you,

to a

certain

extent-and at needtheywillperformheimportanterviceofpartially

concealing

our

meaning

venfrom

yourself"

Howe

258).

The

answer,

he

writes,

is "to let the

meaning

choose

the

word,

and not the

other

345




11/32

Aaron

S. Rosenfeld

way

around"

(255).18

His commitment

here is to the

struggle

against

he

loss

of

authority

over

language.

s

authority

over

the realto

reside

n

the

individual's

bility

to

grasp

"facts,"

r

in the

language

tself?19

anguage

thathas

migrated

rom

speakers

o

"speakers"-the

oudspeakers

hatblare

out

propaganda

n

1984-cannot

guarantee

ndividual

presence.

How, then,

does Orwell's

paranoia

mediate

between

these

conflicting

aesthetic

models?While

Orwell's

nsistence

on

signs

that

can

point

the

way

to the

world

("two

plus

two makes

four")

is an

attitude

that resists

certain of

modernism's

presuppositions

bout

language,

his assertion

of

character

s a

category

hat is

open

to the

protocols

of

reading,

hat exists

as

if in

a

book,

associates

is

text also

with the

very

modernism

he

seems

to strainagainst. t is a deep strainof latentromanticism hat connects

these

positions.

By

imagining

a

subject

who is

in

possession

of-or

who

ought

to be

in

possession

of-an

"impregnable"

eart,

an essential

con-

nection

to a sublime

that

transcends

mere

language,

Orwell

reproduces

romanticism's

erms

of

subjectivity

within

the

protocols

of a modernist

world.

It is this embattled

romanticism

hat surfaces

n

Orwell's

ext

in

the form

of

paranoia.

I

want

to turn

now to several

haracteristic

xamples

hat

suggest

one

version of the romanticrelationship o textuality.Wordsworth'sNuns

fret not

at their

narrowconvent

room"

closes

with an

image

of

agreeable

incarceration

n

poetic

language:

In truth the

prison,

nto which

we doom

Ourselves,

no

prison

is;

and hence

for

me,

In

sundry

moods,'twas

pastime

to be

bound

Within

the

Sonnet's

cantyplot

of

ground.

Ironizing the "scantiness"of the sonnet form, Wordsworthsuggests

that,

far

from

being

a

prison,

t

is,

like

a convent

room,

a

relief from

the

crowded

outside

world.Wordsworth

s

finally

alone

with his text.

The

"we"

of the first

line of

the stanza

becomes

"me"

in

the second

line;

reading

and

writing

are,

inally,

olitary

acts.

The scantiness

of

the

"plot"

occurs

in

several

registers:

raphically,

n the sonnet's

plotting

out of

the

space

on the

page;

expressively,

n the

sense

that the

sonnet

limits itself

to a rendition

of

one

thought,

emotion,

or

feeling;

and

finally

socially,

in the reader's pting out of the world of thingsfor the world of signs.

Wordsworth

laims

the

privilege

of

entering

alone

into the

scantyplot;

the

paranoid

is condemned

to

it.

346




12/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,


MaryShelley's

he

LastManoffers

differentersion

f

the romantic

relation etween

olitude nd

signs.

n

her

novel,

a

plaguewipes

out

all

of

humanity,

eaving

Verney,

he last

man,

n

an

ecstasy

f

singularity:

I

shallwitness

llthe

variety

f

appearance,

hat he

elements

an

assume-I

shall ead

air

augury

n

the rainbow-menace n

the

cloud-some lesson

or

record ear o

my

heart n

everything.

Thusaround he shores

f

deserted

arth,

while

the sun

s

high,

andthe moon waxesor

wanes,

ngels,

he

spirits

f

the

dead,

and he

ever-open ye

of the

Supreme,

ill

behold

he

tiny

bark

freighted

with

Verney-the

LAST

MAN.

(342)

Verneyhasbecomethe one person n the worldwho can read the

signs-literally

he

last

man.

If

Wordsworthooks aroundhis cell and

seesthe

writing

on

the

wall,Verney

eesthe

writing

on the world.But

bothWordsworth

nd

Shelley

provide

subject

who stands loneat

the

centerof

a

network

f

signs,

n

the

privileged osition

of

solitary

eader.

Wordsworth's

nd

Shelley's

ormulations

uggest

he romanticismnher-

ent in

paranoia

and

vice

versa).

o be

alonewith

a

text s the essence f

the

paranoid

tructure f

reading,

hich

presumes special

elationship

betweenreader ndsigns. nOrwell, omanticolitude s exchangedor

paranoid

ingularity,

reserving

he sense hat he

text

can

befor

a chosen

reader.

This

romantic

conception

survives nto the next

century.

But what

happens

when the

signs

no

longer point

to the

self?

Perchedon the

verge

of

modernity,

we see Thomas

Hardyadopting

his

problematic

s theme.

In

"Hap"

Hardy

expresses

nxiety

about the condition of

reference,

ink-

ing

it to

the desireto

find

intentionality

n

the

signs:

If

but some

vengeful

god

would call to me

From

up

the

sky

and

laugh:

"Thou

suffering

hing,

Know that

thy

sorrow s

my ecstasy,

That

thy

love's oss is

my

hate's

profiting "

Then

would

I

bear

t,

clench

myself,

and

die,

Steeled

by

the sense of

ire

unmerited;

Half-eased

n

that a

powerfuller

han

I

Had

willed and meted

me

the tears

I

shed.

347




13/32

Aaron S. Rosenfeld

But not so. How

arrives it

joy

lies

slain

And

why

unblooms

the best

hope

ever sown?

-Crass

Casualty

obstructs the sun and rain

and

dicing

Time for

gladness

casts a moan

...

These

purblind

Doomsters

had as

readily

strown

Blisses

about

my pilgrimage

as

pain.

(Norton 44)

If

there

were

only

intention,

Hardy

seems to

say, oy

would blossom

in

the

knowing

that

one has

been

singled

out,

however

unjustly,

for a bad

ending.

Indeed,

Hardy

returns

again

and

again

to a notion of fate's lack

of

personal

interest as

the

wellspring

of

tragedy.

The

gods

are not

venge-

ful, but randomly, coldly indifferent-and thus, for Hardy'snarrator,sor-

row becomes unbearable.

Hardy

is not

paranoid

in

"Hap";

paranoia

is a

subjunctive promise

of

relief,

an

outlook that

might

somehow

redeem

suffering

by making

it

his

own. Orwell

recapitulates

this

anxiety

about

intention and the

place

of the

subject

in

1984. Winston asks

Julia

if

she

remembers

"that thrush that

sang

to

us,

that first

day,

at the

edge

of the

wood?"

"He wasn't singing to us,"saidJulia."He was singing to

please

himself."

(147)

Like

Hardy's arkling

hrush,

he bird

sings

of

something

Winston

and

Julia

annot

ee,

hat

s

indifferent

o theirexistence.20

The

crisis

Hardy

points

to is not

strictly

a historical one. It also in-

vokes

the exhaustion of a romantic

literary

rhetoric

in

the face of its own

belatedness.

Perry

Meisel

argues

that the modernist novel

in

turn

is

a

form

of

materialized

memory,

an effort

to

retroactively produce

a

ground

that

will authorize the

subject.

This

"paradox

of belatedness"

(5)

infuses

both

modernism and romanticism.

According

to

Meisel,

both romanticism and

modernismenact

a

"retroactive

roduction

of

lost

primacy

by

means

of

evidence

belatedly

gathered

o

signify

the

presence

of

its

absence"

229).

This

formulation

drawsattention to the

important

connection between

these two

modes,

though

there is also a substantive ifference

n

exactly

how

the

"presence

of absence" s

signified.

In the romantic

text,

it

ap-

pears hrough

shift

n

perception;

n

modernism

hrough

shift

n

the

signifying

tatus f the text

itself,

which

relocateshe sublime ot in the

world

but in the

textual

object.

348




14/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,


1984

signals

a new

phase

in

the

battle

for romantic

subjectivity.

Orwell

provides

a

vision

of the romantic

character-Verney,

the last

man-fallen

into a modernist

landscape

where individual

presence

is

disallowed.But instead of

simply lamenting

the demise of the

subject,

Orwell

uses

paranoia

o return the

subject

to the center of the

signify-

ing

system.

Unable to

ignore

the crisis o

which

Hardy

s

responding,

he

indulges

romanticism'santasies

of

reference,

ts

intensity

of

affect,

and

its version

of the solus

ipse,

he

solitary

self,

that seeks to reach

harmony

with nature's

rand

design.21

In

a modernist

world of

fragmentation,

uch

figures

curdle

nto

paranoia.

The sense of

compromised

nterior

space

is criticalto the

paranoid

conception

of the

subject

asa

thing

under

siege.22

t

is a

subject

hatrec-

ognizes

itself

only through

its contact with an outside force that would

eradicate

t,

whose bordersbecome

visible

in

the outline cast

by

the sur-

rounding

army

of threats.

Thus,

even

memory,

which would seem to be

the

impregnable

ore,

the means

by

which the

subject

recognizes

tself,

is shown

in

1984 to be under the control of the state.

If

the

production

of

memory

is

a

wellspring

of both modernismand

romanticism,

n

1984

we

see a failure

to

produce

such

a

grounding memory,

either

through

recollectingan individualpastor defininga textualpresentthat can be

controlled

by

the

individual.

The

reduction

of

memory

to

an

alterable

text

destabilizes oth character

nd

setting.

In

1984,

the

public past

has

been

successfully

overwritten

by

the

authorities,

as in the case

of

Jones,

Aaronson,

and Rutherford.Theold man

in

the bar

possessesnothing

but

a

"rubbish

heap

of

details"

62)

that are of no use to Winston.

Though

he

seeks

to

embrace

he

pastthrough

he

antiques

n

the

junk shop, hrough

his encounterwith the old man

in

the

bar,

or

through

historical

records,

they suggestonly the extent to which the pasthas been effectivelycolo-

nized.

Neither

can

Winston's

private

history

withstand

the

Party's

assault

on

memory.

Although

Winston

manages

o

remember

ragments

of his

personal

history

n

dreams,

uch as

the

"dark,

lose-smelling

room"

(107)

where

he

last saw

his mother

and heardhis sister's feeblewail"

(109)

as

he fled

with

the stolen

chocolate,

even these will be

subject

to

seizure.

"You suffer

from a

defective

memory"

(163),

O'Brien tells

him in

the

interrogation cene;theseprivatememorieswill be replacedby love for

Big

Brother.Winstonhas

already

understoon

he

implications

of

this

ef-

facement,

thinking:

349




15/32

Aaron S.

Rosenfeld

when

memory

failed and written records

were

falsified-when

that

happened,

the claim

of the

Party

to have

improved

human

life had

got

to be

accepted,

because

there

did not

exist,

and

could never

again

exist,

any

standard

against

which it could be

measured.

(63)

Paranoia

n

Orwell's

formulation

provides

an answer

to this

destabilization.

Its

rigid

architectonics

of narrative

underdetermine

character,

stabilizing

it: a

multiplicity

of

signs

is reduced

to a

paucity

of

meaning;

the

paranoid

is

frozen

in someone

else's

text.The

paranoid

text invokes

not

an

extra-

textual

sublime

but a

manifestation,

the

hard sheen

of surfaces.

Rather

than developing charactertoward a horizon of the real,the paranoid

text

develops

character

toward

the

horizon

of

textuality;

but,

unlike

modern-

ism

in Meisel's

formulation,

the

individual's

authority

over

the

resulting

textual

object

consists

only

in

being

named

by

it.

This

emphasis

on

textuality

makes it

no accident

that the

"plot"

of

1984

is

punctuated

by

three

texts: Winston's

diary,

Goldstein's

manual,

and

finally

Winston

himself,

as

intelligible

text to be

read

by

the

state

apparatus

(the

appendix

on

the

principles

of

Newspeak

might

count

as

a

fourth, though

it

falls outside

the

"plot"

of Winston's

demise).The

secret

diary

the

novel

begins

with

is

Winston's

effort

to

resuscitate

a notion

of

the

subject

as distinct

from environment.

But

later,Winston

and his

diary

are

both

read

by

the

thought

police,

suggesting

that

there can

be no

pri-

vate

voice that

is not

subject

to external

authority.Winston

finds

himself

unconsciously

scrawling

"DOWN

WITH

BIG BROTHER"

(14)

over

and

over

again

in

the

margins

of his

diary early

in

the

novel,

but

by

the

end he

is

absently

writing

"2+2=5"

(192)

in the dust

on the table

of the

Chestnut

Tree.This

shift

indicates

the

collapse

of a self

capable

of

oppos-

ing

itself

to the

external

reality

or of

generating

thoughts

that

escape

the

Party's

efforts

to make

language

meaningless

and

wholly

independent

of

the

individual.

"There was

no idea that

he had ever

had,

or

could

have,

that

O'Brien

had

not

long

ago

known,

examined,

rejected"

(170).

The novel

progresses

toward

this

undoing

of

agency

through

a

series

of

revelations

about

its

language.

Though

we encounter

various

compet-

ing

discourses

throughout

the

novel,

from

manuals

to interior

thought

to

dialogue, newspapers,

and

popular

songs,

they

all lead to

the same

place

within

the

text,

having

been

fabricated

and

deployed

by

the

Party.

The

versificator

produces

popular

songs

for

the

proles,

history

is

written

and

350




16/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

nd he Poetics f

Paranoia

rewritten

ccording

o

Party

ictates,

nd

Goldstein's

ubversive anuals

a

trapproduced y

O'Brienand

other

members f

the

Party.

venran-

dom bitsof

doggerel

annot

escape

ncorporation

nto the

design.Win-

ston cannotrememberhe restof the

shopkeeper harrington's

hyme

that

begins Orange

nd emons

ay

he bellsof St.

Clement's;"

inally,

t is

O'Brien,

he

representative

f the

Party,

ho

supplies

he

missing

ines.

The individual

ole n

language

s

conspicuously

bsent.

No book

is

producedndividually,"ccording

o

O'Brien

174);

he

implication

ere

is not that he

language

asbeen

openedup

to

multiple peakers

ho

of-

fertheirown variationsnd

consequently

onstruct communal

ongue,

but that

anguage

as been divorced rom ived

experience.

When

the

propagandaachinesout ncreasesnshoeproductionr announcehat

the

army

s

winning

he

war

against

urasia,

ingular

erceptions

ecome

meaningless

ecause here s

nothing

other han

anguage

n which

to

ground

hem.

"Reality

s not

external,"

'Brien

ays

165);

but he also

goes

on to

say

hat

reality

xists

"[n]ot

n the

individual

mind,

whichcan

make

mistakes,

nd

n

any

case

oon

perishes;

it exists]

nly

n

the mind

of

the

Party,

hich

s collective nd mmortal"

165).23

Newspeak'slay

with

language-though

onstricted nd

oyless-is

the meansbywhich thereal s to be made naccessible.t complements

doublethink,

hich s

the

telling

of

deliberateies while

genuinely elieving

hem,

o

forget

any

actthathasbecome

nconvenient,

nd

hen,

when it

becomes

necessary

gain,

o

draw t back rom

oblivion or

ust

so

long

as t

is

needed,

o

deny

he

existence

f

objective

eality

andall the while

to

takeaccount f the

reality

which

one denies.

(143)

What

s

described

ere s a

poetics

of

signification

hat s both

complete

in

itself

and,

paradoxically,

ndependent

f

anyobjective ignified,

xcept

insofar s the

languagemplies

a

doublethinkingpeaker.

oublethink

erases ll claims o an

extralinguistic

eal.

This

s

sadism irected t

language.

n

fact,

he

sadistic,

aranoid

le-

ment of

1984'sworld

s

directed

mphatically

t

literaryanguage.

he

literature

f

the

past

s

being

translatednto

Newspeak;

yme

explains

toWinston, Chaucer,hakespeare,ilton,Byron-they'llexistonlyin

Newspeak

versions,

ot

merelychanged

nto

something

different,

ut

actually hanged

nto

something

ontradictory

f what

they

used o be"

351




17/32


18/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

nd he Poetics

f Paranoia

What was

more,

I

actually

had a

feeling

they

were afterme al-

ready.

The whole lot of

them All the

people

who

couldn't

un-

derstand

why

a

middle-aged

man with false teeth should sneak

awayfor a quietweek in the placewhere he spenthisboyhood.

And all

the

mean-mindedbastardswho couldunderstand

nly

too

well,

and

who'd

raiseheaven and earthto

prevent

t.

They

were

all on

my

track.

t

was as

if

a

huge army

were

streaming

up

the roadbehind

me. I seemed to see

them in

my

mind's

eye.

Hilda was

in

front,

of

course,

with the kids

tagging

after

her,

and

Mrs.Wheeler

driving

her forward

with a

grim,

vindictive

expression,

nd

Miss

Minns

rushingalong

in

the

rear,

with

her

pince-nez slippingdown and a look of distress n herface, ike

the hen that

gets

left

behind

when the others have

got

hold

of

the bacon

rind.

And Sir

Herbert

Crum and

the

higher-ups

of

the

Flying

Salamander

n

their

Rolls-Royces

and

Hispano-Sui-

zas.And

all the

chaps

at the

office,

and all the

poor

down-trod-

den

pen-pushers

rom EllesmereRoad and

from all

other such

roads,

ome of

them

wheeling

prams

and

mowing-machines

and concrete

garden-rollers,

ome

of

them

chugging

along

in

little Austin Sevens.And all the soul-savers ndNosey Parkers,

the

people

whom

you've

never seen but rule

your

destiny

all

the

same,

he

Home

Secretary,

cotlandYard,

he

Temperance

League,

he

Bank of

England,

Lord

Beaverbrook,

Hitler

and

Stalinon a tandem

bicycle,

the bench of

Bishops,

Mussolini,

he

Pope-they

were

all afterme.

I

could almosthear them shout-

ing:

"There'sa

chap

who thinks he's

going

to

escape

There's

a

chapwho sayshe won't be streamlined.He'sgoing back to Low-

er Binfield After him

Stop

him "

(205--06)26

Here,

as

in

1984,

the desireto returnto the

past

is thwarted

by

a

ubiq-

uitous network

of authorities

and

informants.

n

fact,

Bowling

will find

that

the

fishing

holes

and houses

he

remembers

have

already

been

fouled

by

the same

type

of industrialmiddle-class

development

he is

escaping.

ComingUp

for

Air

also

provides

us

with an earlierversion

of

Big

Brother.

Bowling speaks arcastically

f

the

"god"

of

the

Hesperides

Es-

tates,

he

subsidized,

middle-class

housing project

where

he

now

lives,

as

a

"queer

sort of

god

... bisexual ...

[t]he

top

half would be a

managing

353




19/32

Aaron S. Rosenfeld

director and the bottom

half

would be

a

wife

in

the

family way"

(13).

In

1984,

the order is reversed. Instead

of

seeking

to

escape

from the

tyranny

of a

hermaphroditic

god,Winston

embraces it.

Perhaps

most

significantly,

n

ComingUp or

Air Orwell

provides

n

emblem

of

the

collapse

f boundaries etween

he

private

nd

public

worlds hat becomesrealized

n a

grander

cale

n

1984.

Returning

home,

Bowling

witnesseshe aftermathf

a

bomb's

xplosion

n

Lower

Binfield.The

explosion

has

ripped

he wall off a house

"as

neatly

as if

someone

had

done it with a knife"

264).

The

guts

of

the houseareex-

posed

to

Bowling's

iew:"andwhat was

extraordinary

as that

n

the

upstairs

ooms

nothing

hadbeen

touched.

t was

ust

ike

ooking

nto a

doll'shouse"264). n 1984 thisexposures appliedo character:They

could

ay

bare

n

the utmostdetail

verything

hat

you

haddone or said

or

thought;

ut the

inner

heart,

whose

workings

were

mysterious

ven

to

yourself,

emained

mpregnable"

111).

In

1984 Orwell

ullypulls

down the wall

of

the houseand of

the

subject

o

reveal,

n

a

perverse

witchon

the

family

omance,

he

subject's

true

home n

the

law.

1984closeswith

Winston'successfuleturn

o the

bosom

of

"family."

he

regressive

approchement

f

the novel

unpacks

Freud'sogicofparanoia,"Iovehim, hatehim,hehatesme" Three ase

Histories

39-40).27

t

moves

romWinston's

eeling

hat

he is the

object

of hostile urveillancendcontrol o

anactive

truggle gainst ig

Brother

and

inally

o

an

embrace:He

gazedup

atthe enormousace.

Forty ears

it

had taken

him

to learnwhat kind of smilewas hiddenbeneath he

dark

moustache.

Cruel,

needless

misunderstanding.

stubborn,

elf-

willedexile

from

he

loving

breast"

197).28

he"enormous

ace"

ignals

that

he

sight

ine

belongs

o the

suckling

nfant,

ut

Big

Brothers also

a lover("He ovedBigBrother"197]),a brother"theBrotherhood"),

and

he

fatherwhose aw

Winston

mbraces.

ulfilling

chreber's

antasy

of identification ith

God,Winston

vacuates imself

n

order o

merge

with the

object

of his fear.

In

fact,

he evacuation f Winston's

owels

andbile

is a

recurring

motif

hroughout.)

ere,

he GodWinston nters

is

the

law,

an

empty ign,

no more

han

a

face

on the

telescreen.

he

law

of thefather tands

lways

before"he

paranoid;

e

accepts

his

condition,

choosing

dentification

ather

hanthe

struggle

or

autonomy.29

t

the

endof thenovel,Winstonits nthe Chestnut reeCafe: he"chest-nut,"

the

heart,

urrounds

inston,

e

doesnot surround

t. It

is

the

fulfillment

of

O'Brien's

earlier

prophecy:"Do

you

see that

thing facing you?

That is

354




20/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

nd he

Poetics f Paranoia

the last

man.

If

you

are

human,

hat

is

humanity"

187).

Admitting

defeat

in the will to

recovery,

Orwell

chronicles he last

gasp

of

a romantic

pres--

ence

in

the novel.

Postmodernism,

mphasizing

xcessesof

signification,

enerates

themat-

ics

and

a

poetics

that

is

even

more

highly susceptible

han

modernism o

paranoia,

o the

portrayal

f

reading

as

plot.

If modernist

paranoia

s an at-

tempt

to

preserve

n older model of the

subject, ostmodern

paranoia

will

look somewhatdifferent rom Orwell'sversion.

In

this

section,

I

want to

briefly

examine anothertextualavatar f

paranoia, ynchon's

The

Crying

of

Lot

49,

focusing

on

severaldifferences etween it and

Orwell'sversion

of

paranoia

and on the

implications

of these differences.

Pynchon's

ext

operates

at the

juncture

of modernismand

postmod-

ernismrather han that of romanticism nd modernism.30

Again,paranoia

registers

he

disruptions

caused

by

the

shifting grounds

underneath he

subject.

In

a

singleday,

how

many

non-signifying

ieldsdo we cross?

Very

few,

sometimes

none,"

Roland Bartheswrote

in

1957

(112);

t is as if the

world has

increasingly

made itselfamenable o

being

read ike anovel.As

the

sense of the

subject

constructed

n

and

through

an encounter with

signs

becomes

pervasive,

t is the modernist

subject-patching signs

nto

coherence,

shoring fragmentsagainst

he ruins-who is under

siege,

in

need of rescue.

As Brian McHale

notes,

Pynchon's

iction is

structuredaroundthe

tension between a desire for the textual

unity

of

modernism-a text

that makes

sense-and

the

proliferation

f

signs.

The

Crying f

Lot

49 is

built arounda set of codes thatgivesthe appearance f unitybut in fact

could

simply

be a randomcollection of

signs,

he

posthumouspulsing

of

Inverarity's

ame.Oedipa,

n

turn,

strugglesmightily

o

replace

a

narrative

coherence that has been lost to the

multiple

connections.

Driving

to

San

Narciso,

Oedipa

resolves"to

pull

in

at the next motel she

saw,

however

ugly,

tillnessand four walls

having

become

preferable

t this

point

to this

illusion of

speed,

freedom,

wind

in

your

hair,

unreeling andscapes"

26).

For

Wordsworth he

"scanty

plot"

of

ground promises

a

deeper

reality,

but for Oedipa the "scantyplot"of the four walls representsa blessed

relief from

the

proliferation

of

signs. Pynchon

imagines

Wordsworth's

"narrow convent room" not as a source of the aesthetic sublime but as

355




21/32

AaronS.

Rosenfeld

an

escape, fixing

of

untrammeled

ossibilities.What

s to be

contained

is

Oedipa

herself,

he motel

room

functioning

ike

the

tupperware

hat

opens

he novel.

Oedipa

eeks o know

herself,

othasthe

material

ody

that

Pynchon's

extwithholds-she is never

physically

escribed-and

as the

material

rounding

or her

disembodied

motions.Like

Driblette,

who wants

o

"give

he

spirit

lesh"

79),

Oedipa

s

looking

ora

narrative

framework

hatwill

support

er

desire or

connection.

If

Pynchon's

haracters

epresent

his

yearning,

o doesthe

rhetoric

of the

text

itself.

By

constructing

n

elaborately

ross-referenced

uzzle

thatseems

o reveal ew

unitieswith each

reading, ynchon's

ext

both

validatesnd

ronizes

he

quest

or

meaning.

eo

Bersani's

eading

f

para-

noia n Gravity'sainbow akesustsucha claim or

paranoia,

nd t isa

claim

hat

distinguishes

ynchon's

ersion

f

paranoia

rom

Orwell's:

It

is,

then,

only

within

he

paranoid

tructure

tself-and

not

in

some

extra-paranoid

yth

suchas ove

or

anarchicandom-

ness-that we

can

begin

to resist he

persecutions

hich

para-

noia

magines,

nd,

more

subtly,

uthorizes.

("Pynchon"

09)

For

Bersani,

he

paranoid

ove

s to

"combine

pposition

ith

doubling"

(108), he visiblebecominga deceptivedoubleof the"real."aranoia,

then,

provides

or a

"modelof

unreadability,

convincing

ailure f self-

knowledge"

118)

that

allows or the

maintenance f the

subject

n

a

fluid

stateof

becoming.

he novel

ends

ust

before he

actual

rying

of

lot

49.Wereturn

o what

poses

asa

moment

of

ontological

ertainty,

he

title,

venasthe

novel

resistshe

closure,

he

momentof

self-identity

hat

the

title

promises.

ndeed,

or

Pynchon

n

The

Crying f

Lot

49,

paranoia

becomes

a mode of

knowing

hat,

at

least

provisionally,

ccepts

he

rhe-

toricalgroundof postmodernisms a richnew fieldfor theexercise f

modernist

eading.

s

Dr.

Hilarius

otes,

"in

relative

aranoia

.. at

least

I

knowwho

I

am and

who

the othersare"

136).

The

"knowing" yn-

chon

representsoints

n

two

directions t once: t

is both

knowledge

f

a

perfect

ext

that

might

still

evokeor

map

onto

a world

of humans

nd

knowledge

f the

necessity

f

text,

with

ts

nfinite

deferrals,

n

construct-

ing

subjectivities.

The

scene n

the

bathroom t

Echo

Courts,

when

Oedipa

cannot

findher mage n themirror,mblematizeshedifferenceetweenPyn-

chon

and

Orwell. At

some

point

she

went into the

bathroom,

riedto

find her

image

in

the mirror

andcouldn't.

She

had a moment

of

nearly

356




22/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

and

the Poetics of Paranoia

pure

terror.Then she remembered that the mirror had

broken and fallen

in

the

sink"

(41).

Art no

longer

holds a mirror

up

to

nature;

the mirror

is shattered.

If art is to be

renewed,

it

will

not be because the texts make

sense,

but because

Oedipa

chooses to read them as if

they

do.The narcis-

sistic

presumption

of

centrality

that

underpins

paranoia

here

gives

birth to

semiotic

solipsism.Though

the mirror has

shattered,

Oedipa

will

continue

to

read,

her

(and

the

text's)

paranoia

a

shoring

of

fragments against

the ru-

ins.

Pynchon's

coherent

subject,

as McHale

argues,

s a

modernist,

at home

in

a world of

signs.

Pynchon

answers the

paranoid

tendency

to allow

language

to

ossify

into a frozen

stringency

with a kind of

hyperparanoia,

the

riotous

capacity

of the word to

generate

new

meanings,

new secrets.

It is this

playfulness

that

finally distinguishes Pynchon's

version of

paranoia

from Orwell's. Pierce

Inverarity

remains forever out of reach in

The

Crying of

Lot

49-Oedipa

will continue to

stumble over his

tracks,

conspiracies

will continue to be nurtured in the

back halls of bureau-

cracy,

but we will never

get

to the heart of

the

plot.

There

is no

lifting

of the curtain to reveal a

Big

Brother at whose

loving

breast

Winston

suckles

in

the last lines of 1984.

Finally,

the networks are too

complex

and

untraceable;

as for

Hardy, paranoia

is more a wish

than a successful

practice.The

"scanty

plot"

of the

paranoid

becomes a

potential

means of

containing

narrative,

a

sea wall

against

the tides of

signs

that threaten to

wash

away

the

subject. Though

Oedipa

may

never

fix

herself

in

or to

the

world,

hope

resides

in

the fact that

metaphor

can connect

anything:

"Our

beauty

lies

... in

this

extended

capacity

for

convolution,"

the child

star turned

lawyer

Metzger

observes. Paranoia

simultaneously

promises

to

unpack

the convolution and to

reify

it.

In

Pynchon's

ew introductiono

1984,

he

observes

hat

Big

Brother

and the system he presides over "put the whole question of soul, of what

we

believe to be an inviolable inner core of the

self,

into harsh

and ter-

minal doubt"

(xxiii).

But for

Pynchon,

such an

"inviolable core" remains

a

possibility

in The

Cryingof

Lot

49,

because

signs

are

finally

fluid,

entro-

pic,

simultaneously

demanding

and

resisting paranoia'sattempts

at

fixing.

There is still a future

hope

that

a coherent

subject

will materialize within

or out of

the text. In

place

of Orwell's

grim monologicity, Pynchon's

postmodern paranoia

offers an

intertextuality

capable

of

forging

new

pos-

sibilities for connection and play, he endangered subject safely stowed be-

hind the walls

of

text.

If

there is

a

melancholy

that attaches to

Pynchon's

project,

it

properly

belongs

to

modernism,

to the sense that there is an

357




23/32

Aaron S. Rosenfeld

unspeakable

ossat the heart f

narrative,

"postmodern

ublime,"

n

Marc

Redfield's

hrase

159),

hat s

always et

be

recovered.31

f

postmodern-

ismasksus

to

perceive

extswithina framework

fjouissance,

here

igns

dartanddance,weaving simulacrumf theworld hat s liberating,t

is modernism

hat

combs he text for evidenceof

design.

The

author s

buried

but not

dead,

n

Pynchon's

ords,

likeMaxwell's emon .. the

linking

eature

n

a coincidence"

120-21).

This

paranoia

f the

postmodern

mbraces

he

worldof

signs

hat

Orwell

truggles

gainst.

f

The

Crying f

Lot49 is

a

"critique

f

episte-

mology"

O'Donnell

7),

t is alsoa defense f the

subject

s reader. ut

in

Orwell's

ext,

t

is not

fluidity

ut

rigidity

hat

paranoiamposes,

with

reading correlateorbeingread.This ifferenceuts o the heartof the

distinction etweenOrwell's

aranoia

nd thatof the

postmodern:

or

the

revanchistomanticn

Orwell,

he

signs

hemselves re he

problem,

the markof a world hat

hascome too muchto resemble

novelanda

subject

hathascome too much

o resemble character.

It is

significant

hat n

the scenewith which

I

began

he discussionf

1984,

it is

seemingly

he

picture

hat

speaks

ack. f

Oedipa

cannot ee

herself

n

the

frame,Winston's

ook

yields

up

an

all-too-objective

eflec-

tion.UnlikeOedipa, isroleasreader asbeenfatally ompromisedy

the shiftof

authority

rom he

viewer o the work.Art

speaks,

Winston

can

only

isten.For

Orwell,

till

suspended

etween omantic ndmod-

ernist

poetics, aranoia

akes n a

darker

incture,

ecoming

he record

f

the

struggle

o rescue rom

modernist

oetics

a

subject

hatexists

outside

of

text."Youare outside

history,"

'Brien ells

Winston

179),

but to

return o

history

s to be destabilizedn

the

rewriting

f it.

Anticipat-

ing

HaroldBloom's

nfluence

model,

n

which the

strong

poet

wrestles

withprecursor oets,Orwell's aranoias thesymptom f a momentof

aesthetic ontention. f for

Bloom the

struggle

s with the

past,

Orwell

alsocontendswith the future.t is not

only

the voiceof his

forebears

hat

assails

Orwell,

t is

also

the

voice

that

would"swerve" s Bloom

would

put

it,

and

rewrite he

past

o whichhe is committed.

Orwell's

masterpiece

esides ot

just

at a crucial

emporal-historical

juncture

ut alsoat the intersection f the

competingiterary

iscourses

thatcollide n

Orwell

he artist.

O'Brien's omment Menare

nfinitely

malleable"179)resonates otjustwith totalitarianresumptionsbout

humanity

ut

also

iterature's:

inston's

light

becomesan

allegory

or

the

changing

structures

by

which men are

generated

anew in

each era.

358




24/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

and

the Poetics of

Paranoia

The

paranoid poetics

of 1984 enact this tension as well at the

structural

level,

staging

a

struggle

with modernist

poetics

that

produces,

instead of a

bildungsroman

in

which character is

forged

via the

gaining

of

knowledge

through

the encounter with

"life,"

a reverse

bildungsroman

in which

character s diminished to a

vanishing point

of

textuality.

Modernism shat-

ters the

romantic,

lyric

voice;

out of the

fragments

Orwell reconstructs a

romantic

version of textual sense

to

replace

"essence."The

signs may

be

blowing apart,

but

by

reading

them as

indicative

of

a

plot

directed toward

the

solitary

individual,

Orwell reclaims

a

grandiose,

utopian

centrality

for

Winston.Then,

though

the radical

passivity

that

governs

the

text-Win-

ston is not the

reader but

the

read-affords

Winston

a no less

central

position,

it is the

centrality

of the inmate. Orwell's

"scanty plot"

becomes

a

prison-house

for the romantic

subject.

Notes

1.

See

Pynchon's

new introduction o 1984 for the

most recent

example.

Also

see William Steinhoff.Alex

Zwerdlinggives

an excellent account of Orwell's

relationship

o

politics

in

Orwell nd the

Left,

ocusing particularly

n his

strug-

gle to adapt iction to politicalendsduringthe 1930s and 40s.

2.

Raymond

Williams,

on the

other

hand,

claimsthat Orwell fails to

recognize

the materialrelationsof his own created

world,

chalkingup

this failure o his

"obsession

with

ideology"

(77).

3.

By

using

the word

poetics

ere,

I

mean to

say

that

the novel's

paranoiaap-

pears

not

only

in its

theme, characters,

r

subject

matter

(though

it does

appear

in

each of

these)

but also that it

appears

n

what Peter

Brooks calls the

"logic

of narrative"

21):

as a

dynamic

structural nd

syntactic

element

that

parallels,

rehearses, nd illuminatesparanoidpsychic organization 3-36). In an effort to

move

beyond

traditional

ormalism,

Brooks

articulates relationbetween

the

movementsof desireand those of

narrative.He

suggests

hat

in

"plot"

we see

a

working through

and out of a

hermeneuticcode that draws ts

energy

from

psychic

economies of desire.

David

Shapiro's

nfluentialbook Neurotic

tyles

s

also

seminal

n

enabling

a considerationof

paranoia

not as a

clinical

designa-

tion but as a set of formal

operations.

Shapiro

drawsattentionto the formal

qualities

nherent

n

such

categories

as

"suspicious

ognition,""projection,"

"biasedattention"

59),"lack

of

spontaneity,"

nd"disdain or the obvious"

(64),

identifying

he attendant

operations

as hallmarks f

paranoid

modes of

thinking.My

description

below draws

heavily

on

Shapiro.

359




25/32


26/32

Orwell,

Pynchon,

and

the Poetics of Paranoia

Much

of the wealth

of recent criticalwork

focuses on Americanmani-

festations

of

paranoia,

ncluding anthologies

edited

by George

Marcusand

by

Jane

Parish

and MartinParker.

notable

exception

is Trotter'swork

discussed

above.Takinganothertack,LindaFisher ocatesparanoiawithin the herme-

neutical

"tradition

f

suspicion"

109)

growing

out

of

Marx,Nietszche,

and

Freudand

carried orward

by

Ricoeur

and Gadamer.

Building

on these theo-

ries,

t is

paranoia

as a

"literary" athology

that

most interestsme here.

8.While

romanticism

nd modernism

are both

obviously

contentious

cat-

egories,

I want to deal with

them here as

constituting

a fluid but

recognizable

set of characteristic

ropes,

igures,

andstructures.

s

precedent

or

this,

I

am

following

the

approach

aken

by

criticssuch

as Ihab Hassan

"Toward

Con-

cept of Postmodernism")or modernismandpostmodernismandWellek for

romanticism.

For

Wellek,

romanticism

s

characterized

y "imagination

or the

view of

Documents

The Scanty Plot: Orwell, Pynchon and the Poetics of Paranoia