A Note on Genre

[Vaska Tumir]

Perhaps I quibble, but I tend to view the picaro as the type always already
teetering on the edge of self-parody, often to plunge into it headlong.
There's no way to tell between a "straight" picaresque and a parody thereof:
the "straight" genre is itself so baroquely excessive, it's from the word go
at once a celebration and a send-off of the ethos it enacts.

Somebody mentioned Frye recently -- sorry to be a ittle vague about this,
but I'm nursing a most damnable 'flu so some things are a bit hazy right
now -- and here's one of those places where Frye really works: think of the
picaresque as the genre that inaugurates the middle class in literature (as
it does, as it does); think of irony as the mode that dinstinguishes it (the
middle class, that is); little surprise that it would be that perhaps
singular type in fiction that parodies itself even at its very inception.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terence" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: "David Simpson" <dsimpson at condor.depaul.edu>
Cc: <pynchon-l-digest at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2000 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: A Note on Genre


> I agree 1000% with David. However, for me, the picaresque is
> parodied in the Menippean Satire V.. The Profane plot is
> picaresque, Profane the picaro, not doubt about it, but
> there is good reason to read these a picaresque parody.
>
> Now, this is not an argument about Genre anymore.


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