M&D truthtelling, history & I.F. Stone(WAS Publisher's Weekly (fwd)

[Peter Giordano]

He said:
>I don't care what the book is about, even "Romance novels", with predictable
>plots and fill-in-the-blanks mentality, it is still a book, which means the
>action
>and characters take place SOLELY inside your brain, and even the most detailed
>description does not fill in every blank, so your mind blooms and soars to
>meet the gaps, it assigns the character to every voice, it creates the
>image of
>every body, it smells the scene, it walks inside the minds of the
>characters, it
>feels the heat of the sun on itself.
>Yes, there are crappy books and there are books which are of high quality
>and of low quality.  But with every SINGLE book ever written EVER, you
>take little scribbles of signs on a piece of paper and enter them into your
>head
>to make those words come alive.
>
>With TV and movies (not photography) the work is done for you.  All
>you have to do is let it enter your consciousness.  You don't have to
>understand the subtleties, the context, or the background.  You don't
>need to even be able to read or communicate effectively.

I say:
The above is a highly romantized vision of reading which does not bear out
in the real world - Not because he argues that reading is as wonderful as
what he describes, but because he excludes media of which he does not
approve - The flaw in the above is best illustrated in his exemption of
photography from his list - Why is photography exempt and not film?  Plenty
of painters would (wrongly) disagree with him - Bottom line:  good film is
just as rewarding as good literature and just as challenging

I said:
>>To relate this to Pynchon - How could one "get" GRAVITY'S RAINBOW without
>>at least a passing experience with the films of the Marx Bros, CITIZEN
>>KANE, or the work of Fritz Lang?
He said:
>I find this highly insulting and elitist.  I am not familiar with any of the
>above so I guess I don't "get" Gravity's Rainbow.
I say:
It was not my intention to be insulting - I was merely raising an issue -
The novel clearly has a foundation in our common film heritage - It opens
and closes in a movie theater - The squares separating sections of the book
are generally accepted to represent the sprockets of film reels - And much
of the internal referencing in the novel is to a whole range of film
experience - I asked a question: is it possible to "get" what trp had in
mind if one does not share in the common range of experience he seems to
expect?  I really don't know

I'll give you another example - My ever delightful 13 year old son has been
looking forward to watching Igmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL tonight, not
because he's some sort of intellectual fan of Swedish movies, but because
he has seem references to the film in various movies (like Woody Allen),
comic books, and even theater) and he wants to see what the big deal is - I
admire him for this - At the same time, I would not require Sojourner to
sit through several hours of the Marx Bros (although he might enjoy it) -
But at the same time I would suggest that his perception of GR might be
different if he did see the Marx Bros. - One more example: I was in our
local book store last night and I was talking to the manager about a book I
wanted to read which I so far have only found in German - I told me that
somebody gave him a copy of THE LORD OF THE RINGS in French which he is
reading and enjoying - So I said "Well, you must speak French well" - And
he said no his French is very poor - As James Thurber said: It looses
something in the original

Anyway, I cast no judgement on those who enjoy GR sans Marx and Fritz

Peter Giordano
Williams College
Williamstown, MA