Recurring Characters

[Mikko Keskinen]

And the next question in the _Trivial Pynchon Pursuit_ is, "How many 
characters recur in all of Pynchon oeuvre, including blurbs, prefaces, 
and liner notes?" The right answer is 26.  That is, the number of letters in 
the English alphabet.

This is not merely trivial, but it also points at a fundamental feature of 
literature (and its characters qua persons).  As Mallarme'wrote, "The 
book, a total expansion of the letter, must draw from it, directly, 
mobility."  He also claimed that literature does not mean anything but it 
just consists of twenty-six letters.

There are good reasons for a _literal_ conception of literature and 
characters.  It for one thing dramatizes the necessary categorical 
similarity of fictional persons and real people.  In order to appear in 
fiction, both have to be textualized, turned into the material 
inscription that we know by the name of writing.  The repetition 
of letters/characters does not mean the recurring of the same, but, as 
Deleuze would put it, "the returning of that which returns."

This is foregrounded in a number of American novels from Hawthorne's _The 
Scarlet Letter_ to Pynchon's _V._ or Updike's _A Month of Sundays_.  The 
dissemination of the seemingly similar, the pulverization of what seems 
unproblematically identical with itself, also draws attention to the 
graphic or iconic "nature" of letters.  The seeming insignificance of the 
signifier is thus ignored and attention is paid to very sensual-emotive 
"noise."  The hypersemanticization of signifiers hence acknowledges the 
_literiness_ of literature without falling into the trap of 
graphocentrism, because the effects not only visual but also aural or 
even tactile (as when a text is recited).

Mikko