GRGR(11): Webley Silvernail/a little on narration

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Michael Crowley wrote:
> 
> > Does anyone else think of American Romance here? Hawthorne
> > and company? Does anyone attribute the ironic strategies of
> > this narrator to Eliot? Doesn't Pynchon's use of film owe
> > more to Hawthorne ("HSG" in particular) than Hollywood?
> >
> > TF
> 
> This sounds pretty cool, but I'm not sure how you mean the use of film in
> this scene is indebted to Hawthorne.  I definitely see an attitude
> in TP's narrator(s) similar to the tone of preface to House of Seven
> Gables, in which Hawthorne explains the difference between Romance and
> Novel and how this difference allows him to take whatever
> liberties in diverging from "mot merely ...the possible,
> but...the probable and ordinary course of man's experience" (relevant also
> to the discussion of novels in M&D).
> 
> H writes, in part, "The point of view under which this tale comes under
> the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with
> the very present that is flitting away from us." He finishes the preface,
> perhaps disingenuously, by suggesting that the reader should not "choose
> to assign an actual locality to the imaginary events of this narrative. .
> . . It has been no part of his [Hawthorne's] object to describe local
> manners, nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a community
> for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard."  H is
> covering his ass even before the Pynchons start complaining. Even so, he's
> not nearly as concerned with local manners and realism as TP is in
> Gravity's Rainbow.  It's the amount of scholarship and realistic detail in
> GR that creates the foundation for the more fantastic elements, not a cute
> preface like Hawthorne's.
> 
> I'm trying to recall how the novel itself might fit into TP's use of film,
> but help me out here.  The gothic elements in GR are sakin to some of H's
> work, but probably owe more to H Walpole and M Shelley.


Right, he mentions and discusses both in the Luddite essay
and in his 
Luddit essay (1984) Pynchon names Romance as "one of the
neighborhoods, let us say, closely defined in the great City
of Literature"  failing 
to be considered serious enough and thus redlined under the
label 'escapist fare.'"
Pynchon has remarkable balance I think. He knows that each
work is unique, but if we treat each work as the unique
project that they are, we have no "science" with which to
approach them. If Romance is simply "love conquers all" what
happens to the great City of Literature? What happens to
these works? 
The Preface to Hawthorne's "HSG" is helpful here, thanks for
posting it.  Romance is not easily defined, in fact we might
say, that all the contradictory readings of the Romance or
of
American Romance testify to its reluctance to be
categorized, but that's another issue, more to your question
is that the use of fictional photograph and other pictorials
often functions in
the the American Romance as film and other pictorials
function in GR. So, while Kong may be important, and all
sorts of genres from all sorts of medium may be grafted onto
Pynchon's Poetry, the roots of his works are feeding on
other Poets. 

TF