Pirate's Gift/dream theory

[Cal McInvale]

<Dkipen at aol.com> writes:
>It's always amazed me that St. Elsewhere could explain away its entire
>multi-season run as the dream of an idiot child and draw accolades for formal
>innovation, when years before another show had plotted itself into a corner
>and extricated itself brilliantly using precisely the same gambit, and people
>couldn't whale on it hard enough. Ok, so it was Dallas, but even so....

Critics had wildly praised St. Elswhere for years.  They had written
*themselves* into a corner & were not about to go back on there own
criticisms.  There were a few brave souls (Rosenberg, I think) who bagged
on this "dream" premise.  It is *always* a cheap thing to do to the reader
(see Gardner, "On Becoming A Novelist"), not unlike the famous twists some
stories have. (My favorite:  two intrepid souls leave a dying planet and
crash land on a green, lush, fertile world.  And their names turn out to be
Adam and Eve....gag!)

>Unrelated remora thought #1: Pynchon is the soul of graciousness when he's
>recommending Oakley Hall, John LeCarre, Kerouac et al in the Bindownso
>introduction, or assorted new fiction in his jacket blurbs, or Dickinson,
>Rilke and other uncopyrighted panjandra in his fiction, but WHAT WRITERS
>CAN'T HE STAND? Or if he can't say anything nice, does he just keep mum? (Mum
>must be the original kept woman...)

Perhaps TP subscribes to something John Irving once said, that there are
plenty of would-be novelists who become critics & bag on successful writers
for silly reasons; Irving thus resolved not to write negative reviews.  If
he did not like a book, he would decline to review it.  It is an approach
that is also taken by Vonnegut, I believe, and a small number of other
folks.  It's a good idea, I think... It is very helpful knowing which
writers Pynchon likes, which ones may have influenced him.  What difference
does it make which ones he dislikes?

Maybe the real question here is: is it the novelist's job to criticize
other novelists?  I don't think so.  Myself, I quit writing book reviews
years ago, giving up a comparatively lucrative mode of freelance writing,
because I don't want to contribute to the morass of what I call
non-literary criticism.

>Unrelated remora thought #2: Has any writer ever used the ellipsis to as
>great effect as TRP? What Amherst Em did for the dash -- with which Tom no
>slouch, neither -- the Glen Cove cyclone for those three little turds...

Kerouac allegedly tried to make extensive use of ellipses and dashes in his
works, only to have editors do away with them.  Thomas Bernhart, I believe,
makes extensive use of ellipses in some of his novels.

>Unrelated (C)remora thought #3: Betcha didn't know what Trefoil, Tantivy,
>Bloat and Corydon all have in common -- they're all guide words in the Oxford
>Concise English Dictionary. Coincidence, happenstance, or enemy action?

I'm coming to believe that there is very little accident or happenstance in
Pynchon's work.  Coincidence, yes: in the purest meaning of the word,
coincidence can be deliberate.  Not to dredge up the chaos-fractal thing
again, but Pynchon's universe seems to be one where an incident examined
alone seems accident, but when examined in relation to the whole it seems
not accident.  I'm just starting Complexity, by M. Waldrop, and it's giving
me ideas...

>You are all the non-dairy creamer in my coffee,
>David

Ah, David: you're the artificial sweetener in my diet non-cola beverage!


Cal McInvale
godot at rt66.com
------------------------
What is most appealing about young folks, after all, is the changes, not
the still photographs of finished character but the movie, the soul in
flux.  -- Thomas Pynchon