pynchon the picture -Reply

[Tom Gorman]

John Pendergast wrote:

When I read Pynchon (and I assume by the posts I am joined by a few others) I find myself in the presence of a master. How do I judge a master? By the ability of the writer's words to stand alone, and to stand the test of time. Our literary culture is based upon the "presence" of Shakespeare, a figure about whom we know next to nothing * 

I, like so many others, found myself looking for the Times in the hopes of seeing Pynchon, perhaps so that some perverse desire would be fulfilled. But I think it is important to not let the same repitillian (sp?) part of our brain which buys pornography also drive us to search for pictures of Pynchon which we all know will not add any real
appreciation to his art.

John:

Your invocation of Shakespeare in this connection is interesting. Henry James, in an introduction he once wrote for an edition of THE TEMPEST, had something to say to those who advised us to forget about Shakespeare the man--of whom, as you say, very little is known--and content ourselves with Shakespeare the poet as he comes to us through the plays and sonnets. I quote at some length: "For it is never to be forgotten that we are here in the presence of the human character the most magnificently endowed, in all time, with the sense of the life of man, and with the apparatus for recording it; so that of HIM, inevitably, it goes hardest of all with us to be told that we have nothing, or next to nothing, to do with the effect in him of this gift. If it does not satisfy us that the effect was to make him write KING LEAR and OTHELLO, we are very difficult to please: so it is, meanwhile, that the case for the obscurity is argued. That is sovereign, we reply, so far as it goes; but it tells us nothing of the effect on him of being ABLE to write LEAR and OTHELLO. * It is true of the poet in general--in nine examples out of ten--that his life is mainly inward, that its events and revolutions are his great impressions and deep vibrations, and that his 'personality' is all pictured in the publication of his verse. * Shakespeare [is] * the spirit in hungry quest of every possible experience and adventure of the spirit, and which, betimes, with the boldest of all intellectual movements, was to leap from the window into the street. We are in the street, as it were, for admiration and wonder, when the incarnation alights, and it is of no edification to shrug shoulders at the felt impulse (when made manifest) to follow, to pursue, all breathlessly to track it on its quickly-taken way. Such a quest of imaginative experience, we can only feel, has itself constituted one of the greatest observed adventures of mankind; so that no point of the history of it, however far back seized, is premature for our fond attention. Half our connection with it is our desire to 'assist' at it; so how can we fail of curiosity and sympathy?*

I guess I would disagree with the idea that our curiosity about Pynchon as a person--including a desire to find out what he looks like--should be considered in any sense a pornographical impulse. I think, as James suggests apropos of Shakespeare, that our curiosity is not only natural but springs from a serious engagement with his work.