Prosthetic Paradise (was Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1012

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 28 Nov 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> The back door of philosophy, yes, Swift uses this metaphor. 
> 
> Clearly. It would be po-faced of me not to hear the wit
>         in a passage like this. But Scarry's humor is so
> closely
>         tied to a kind of humorlessly passionate intensity
> that it
>         is hard to appreciate for its own sake. What makes
>         ''Dreaming by the Book'' stimulating is also, quite
>         frequently, what makes it infuriating.
> 
> "Passionate intensity" is an insult that I'm sure Scarry
> will recognize. "The worst are filled with passionate
> intensity," WB Yeats, "The Second Coming." 


Yes, one might assume that if you'll going to write shocking litcrit you
darn well better know lit itself--unless by chance lit is just one more
"text" one can enter as well by the back door as the front.

And the reviewer must surely have been reading the p-list over the
weekend:

	". . . What exactly is the mysterious
          relation between novelist and reader whereby
          we are simultaneously free and guided, held
          within an authorial vision that nonetheless
          allows us direct access to the characters and
          their actions? What is the nature of our
          belief in persuasive fiction, and how does it
          differ from our belief in the contents of a
          personal letter we have received? What is the
          role of authorial voice in all this, and what
          part do tone, rhythm, diction and other
          auditory (as opposed to visual) elements play
          in literature?"

		P.