Where are we in V?

[Saioued Al-Zaioued]

hello dear p-reading p-listers,

     I started reading V. way back in September, and been sprinting ahead of 
you guys, slowing down, and sprinting again. Now I think I do not know where 
you guys are. I am in the begginning of chap. 10, "various set of young 
people get together", and I vaguely remember reading Mr. Perez writing an 
excellent summary of chapter 7. Where the hell are we? Anyone thinks that we 
should pick up the pace a little?

i really want to start a discussion on trends in experimental narrative and 
the contemperory novel because that is the field I am getting into, but you 
guys politely shut me off after I suggested a coover vs. pynchon thing....do 
you guys mind me trying again?

I finished a close read of Melville's "Bartleby", a great story and I 
beleive the writer to be the first complex american fiction writer 
immediately (correct me at will) after Poe. It seems that a trend was 
starting with the romantics (lets say Frankenstien as a landmark romantic 
work) that strives for a complexity that goes beyond its readers. There is 
an intellectual vein that wished this artform to be that of their own, 
rather than the populistic novels that are quickly labels as Trash, Mystery, 
Romance, Westerns, etc. I think that the works became polythematic and the 
use of multiple perspectives was the first step in that direction, the next 
being experimentation in narrative to express internal emotions (stream of 
conscienceness, flaubert, Joyce), Fantastical unreal fiction (Barth, 
Rushdie, Coover, Pynchon, Borges), what trends are starting now?



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com