Paranoia: What is a character?

[Paul Mackin]

Nothing to correct. I DID say "the book is paranoid" but meant it as a
hypothesis to be tested. A theory of what the book is. Seeing that it's
Pynchon paranoia might well be a fruitful place to start looking. I was
following Paul N's lead. I haven't yet started rereading M&D but read it
twice and listened to the tapes when it came out.  It is constantly being
stressed that there is always a theory in operation, acknowledged or not.
Let's look for paranoia in any manifestation we can find. Other theories no
doubt applicable will be Marxism , Freud, Feminism, Postmodernism, the
lessons of Foucault. Some will want to bring in Astrology, Alchemy,
Christianity. etc.

        P.


  ----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Nightingale" <paulngale at supanet.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2001 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: Paranoia: What is a character?


> A couple of key points from Paul Mackin (who hopefully will correct me if
> I'm wrong here). Firstly, criticism is concerned with the text, not
> individual characters considered in isolation. One of the problems with
> thinking of characters as real people, according them individual
> psychologies, is that we can never enjoy a human relationship with them,
we
> can never interact with them. Nonetheless, characters can stand in for
> absent humans, which is where empathy comes into it. So it doesn't matter
if
> they are robots or monsters or anything else. Frankenstein's monster is an
> outlaw; we relate to that, to the way he/it implicitly functions as a
> critique of society. Ditto Roy/Rutger Hauer in Bladerunner: I defy anyone
> not to be moved by his "time to die" speech. Moreover, the fact that
> Deckard/Harrison Ford might 'himself' be a replicant doesn't/shouldn't
> matter: he is part of a tradition of outsiders who yearn, on our behalf,
for
> something better.
>
> Secondly, Paul characterises the text itself as paranoid. Yes, if this
means
> the text couldn't have been written without paranoia. P-listers have
argued
> over (sorry, discussed) GR and whether it refers to the Vietnam war. The
> novel could only have been written at a time when the Watergate scandal
was
> made possible by the refusal to accept, unquestioningly, the actions and
> constructions of political leaders. I'm also thinking of Angus Calder's
The
> People's War, first published in the late-60s: this history of British
> society during WWII set out to explode some of the cosy myths that
survived
> from the 1940s, constructions that had glossed over the question of class
> conflict for example. M&D could only have been published when the writing
of
> history had been problematised by Foucault and others.
>