[2]doktor's pre(in)scriptions

[MASCARO at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU]

As this exchange continues, Jimmy, it seems to me that we're both seeing pretty much the
 same things, but drawing different conclusions.  So at some point it's just *De gustibus*
 and we read along our own merrie paths.  I see no wimpyness in your post, though
 maybe you have realized that it might be hard to find chunks of verbosity in GR.  As joe
 v. points out, *clasms* was just what happens to an icon when an iconoclast gets hold of 
it, though after seeing Monte's pun of the day, I'll lay off the wordplay for awhile.  I was 
simply saying that IMO, the destruction of so many *readerly* expectations is an act of 
creativity, not destruction (or maybe it is creative destruction).

For me GR clearly sez *surrender* (but not the way Marvy would say it; perhaps Katje 
might say it in the right tone of voice).  I remember on first read despairing of *keeping it
 all in my head* and the great rush of liberation that followed when I decided not to even 
bother trying, just to live w/in each moment of the book without worrying about who
 this character is, or where that character went, or where are those six pounds of hashish
 anyway?  I used to tell my friends who complained that they got bogged down in it to start
 reading at Part 3 and complete the circle from there (yes Gershom, I really do think it is a
 circle as the WAKE is a circle, though you seem to see it a bit differently w/ the Omega
 image you mention).

On the emotional responses you mention, I am one of those who feel that the joining
 together of thought and emotion in one total moment is the hallmark of the aesthetic
 experience (we could talk about Eliot's *dissociation* here, or Pound's def. of an Image as
 *an intellectual and emotional construct occurring in an instant of time*).  I am one of
 those folks who literally can't think (as my posts reveal abundantly)--I only feel.  All my
 thoughts are driven by emotions; they ARE emotions on some level I can't define 
verbally.  I reacted to GR emotionally in the same gesture as reacting intellectually.  Parts
 of it can still tear my heart out--Tantivy's disappearance, for example, hurts every time I
 read it, as does the affection Slothrop felt for him seem poignant to the max.  And I
 don't think one reacts*intellectually* to Pudding's pudding either, or Pointsman in the 
closet, or Roger's loss of Jessica, etc etc.

Like you, greeting a long tough work day/week --a-and it's bloody hot and airless in Los 
Angeles today.

john m
***********************************************
jimmy's post quoted:
>
>John M. suggests that I was "so swept away by the metaphor
>[Col49-as-chamber-piece, suggested by Henry] that [I] start making
>completely unjustified extrapolations from it (symphony?)."  Yeah, I
>probably was carried away, or well into a third martini or something.  Then
>he goes on:
>
>        What possible connection to the question of GR's
>        quality can the observation about adding notes have?
>        I never dreamed you were accusing GR of verbosity.
>        You can't really mean that can you?  One of the
>        reasons folks call it sometimes a *prose poem* is
>        not because it lacks a coherent narrative, but because
>        it sustains an almost inhuman density of language,
>        for over 700 pages.  Verbosity is empty language.
>        (I'm not sure what *excessive* verbosity might be.)
>        I doubt you could show me any chunks of empty
>        language in GR. But if you can, please do.
>
>I think the reason some have labeled GR a prose poem _is_ because they
>perceive that it lacks a coherent narrative.  Here is a book that presents
>an extraordinary number of ideas, images, characters, points of view,
>references and snippets of plot.  But where does one find the coherent
>narrative?  You have argued that part of the book's power is its ability to
>thwart the reader's expectation of cause-and-effect.  Isn't this lack of
>cause-and-effect another way of saying that there is not much coherent
>plot?
>
>I agree with John's idea about pre(in)scriptions.  Admirably phrased!  (If
>Alec McHoul could have come to that point as well as you did, I might have
>gotten a lot more out of "Writing Pynchon.")  When I used the word
>"iconoclastic" to describe this process, I meant it in its original sense
>of pertaining to the smashing of icons--and in this original sense, icons
>were a far more serious matter than advertising.  And here we get to what
>may be that irreducable conflict between our views of the "greatness" or
>GR.  I admire, on an intellectual and quasi-political level, Pynchon's
>wholesale disruption of the reader's expectations in GR.  But this
>technique doesn't exert any hold over my emotions, so I come away from the
>book feeling like my mind has just run a marathon but my emotions have
>hardly gotten their running shoes on.  It it this gut-level tug that causes
>books to be read hundreds of years after they were written.
>
>Regarding the length of the book, of course I don't think shorter is always
>better.  But I wonder: by the time GR was being written, Pynch had
>established himself as a writer to be reckoned with.  Did anyone edit GR,
>or were his editors so bedazzled by the man's works that they let GR go to
>press untouched?  I think the reason so many people start but do not finish
>GR is because all that disruption of the reader's expectations and gets
>wearisome after, say, 400 pages.  I'm not prepared now to say what I would
>have cut...that's another post that I could only write just after
>re-reading GR.  (I know this is a wimpy response to your challenge, John.)
>
>BTW, John, you wrote: "GR, like all of P.'s writing, creates much more than
>it clasms."  Is that last word a typo, or merely confirmation of my own
>ignorance?  And if the former, what was it supposed to be?  Clasps?
>Claims?
>
>And now, apropos of god-knows what: I was describing Hemingway's _In Our
>Time_ the other day to someone who had not read it, when it occurred to me
>that it bears a number of resemblences to GR.  A number of
>thematically-linked stories taking place during a war, none of which are
>sustained to any great length.  Critiques of the kind of thought that
>reduces people in war to the category of "other" for the purpose of killing
>and/or dehumanizing them.  A structure that disrupts the reader's
>expectations.  A book that raises questions about whether it should be
>called a novel at all.  Techniques of organization and presentation that
>seem borrowed from film.  Admittedly I have not checked the P-list archive
>on this...has anyone made such a connection before?
>
>Sorry for the rambling nature of this post...a busy day looms large and ugly.
>
>--Jimmy
>
>http://www.angelfire.com/oh/Insouciance/index.html
>
>
>