Homage and Imposture

[Richard Romeo]

>
>Almost sounds like some strange type of age-ism to me.
-----------
It does, but it isn't--I felt in DFW's case that his borrowing from Pynchon, 
Gaddis, etc. was a wee bit too claustrophobic for me--But DFW is rather 
young and can be forgiven the excesses of the young writer--maybe he needed 
to flush out his system the overwhelming influence of those who came before. 
But this is just my art-less opinion...Could it be that recognizing many of 
a writer's allusions somehow lessens one's enjoyment over time--I think it 
was John Banville who said that his perfect reader would be someone who knew 
a little bit about the subject, but not too much so as to spoil the reading 
experience. I think DeLillo's comment that novels, stories should retain a 
bit of mystery (not density for its own sake.

The allusion to Reed in GR, for example, (re)establishes problematic
>temporal issues in the text (i.e., the events in the text take place (where 
> >we can clearly establish them) in the 1940s, but the narrator(s) (who 
> >occasionally enter the minds of the characters) are alluding to a text 
> >published in 1972).
-------------
Maybe true, but seems rather pedantic--of course, there are many aspects of 
the "narrator" in GR that are off-putting.

what way does an >allusion to a contemporary author become a detraction 
while allusions to >_The_White_Goddess_ or Rilke or Plasticman enrich (or 
enRich) the text?
-----------------
When it's so overt, I suppose



>
>One other quick bit: something seems unclear in your (Rich's) post that
>denounces academic allusion and suggests a preference for an idea modeled
>after Stephen Dedalus' aethetics...(he *is* the fella with the academic
>stink, right?)
>
>Keith W
--------------------
Joyce said that Stephen is such an insufferable prig or some such--but, in 
any case, Stephen's remark about God to Mr. Nestor, is some indication that 
Stephen's heart is in the right place, linked as he is with Bloom.  I always 
wondered whether Bloom also sees himself in Stephen after he's punched by 
the British soldier, as well as Rudy, him being his own father, etc.

Rich


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