Opinions are like underwear

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: Opinions are like underwear


> Every novel is a unique project. But if we treat every novel as simply
> and only  a unique project, we can not have a "science" with which
> to study them, talk about them, compare them.  We can't compare them
> unless we have such a science. Unless we are going to sit around like
> the whole sick crew and toss around a bunch of Freudian cant and
> opinion, we need to get a bit more "scientific" about all this.  I've
> read Pale Fire. Can't remember it, much less talk about how good it is
> and why. We have to agree to discuss common texts. I might pick up Pale
> Fire or JR or Group Portrait with Lady or Song of Solomon, The German
> Lesson, or any of my old favorites and re-read them if I can find a few
> people to read these. Or something new to me or to the group--Rick
> Moody's new book or Dick's new collection of whatever. But unless we can
> agree to discuss common texts,  what's the point? What's the point?
> Apples, Oranges, Bananas, Grapes? It's all just insecurity. Isn't it?
> Isn't it really about what you got in your fruit-of-the-looms? Isn't it
> all about your underwear? Sure it is.
>
> So we have criticism. Don't like lit-crit? Fine. It's just a bunch of
> theory and tools and jargon, but it helps.
>

In order to say something reasonable about a novel, to get beyond the point
of merely "like-it-or-not" lit-crit seems necessary to me.

>
> And,  Criticism is itself an art. Critics are not parasites
> feeding on the art of artists. No! They are important and without them,
> well we would not even have some of the great works we fight so much
> about.
>

Right

>
> More importantly, criticism has a long history and the novel has
> a relatively short history.
>

Doesn't the question of how to understand, to interpret the "scriptures"
come from Bible exegesis?

>
>So, we are still working out a "science" to
> study
> novels.
>

And will always be I guess.

>
> Now, some don't like pigeon holes, boxes, classifications, etc.
> and one can always stand firm and on solid ground and dismiss all
> attempts to classify--in genres or otherwise. But remember, it is
> Pynchon and not simply critics that opens the "encyclopedia" of texts
> and cultural allusions by writing  and writers and critics have a
> reciprocal relationship.
>

Indeed. Which is the reason that I like John Barth so much who is both, but
apart from "Chimera" (1972) I like him more as a teacher explaining
literature than as novelist:

"The storytellers' trade is the manifacture of universes, which we do with
great or little skill regardless of explanations and interpretations.
Rightly or wrongly, we had rather make things that we can't explain than
explain things that we can't make."
("The Friday Book", NY 1984, p. 17)

>
> I may not like the term postmodern or postmodernist, but that won't stop
> me from reading McHale or Weisenburger. Terms can get in the way. So can
> theory. Isms of this and that, but these can help frame a discussion,
> give it some reason to exit other than who has a bigger banana in their
> fruit of the looms.
>

Right, remember MalignD's fine post on consistency (14/8/02, Re: MDDM
World-as-text).

>
> I agree with S~Z, M&D is a fun book for an internet read. As is most of
> Pynchon. I'm not sure that A Dying Animal would hold the interest of
> this group or generate all the side shows and encyclopedic research we
> have so much fin with round here, but you never know.
>
> Of course there is nothing wrong with opinion, but to what end here on
> P-L?
> To argue for argument's sake?
>
> Ulysses towers over the rest of Joyce's writings, and in
> comparison to its noble  originality  and  unique  lucidity
>  of thought  and  style  the  unfortunate  Finnegans Wake is
> nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a
> cold pudding  of  a  book, a persistent snore in the next room,
> most aggravating to the insomniac! I am. Moreover, I always
> detested regional literature full  of  quaint  old-timers  and
> imitated pronunciation.  Finnegans Wake's facade disguises a very
> conventional and drab tenement house, and only  the
> infrequent snatches   of   heavenly   intonations  redeem  it  from
> utter insipidity. I know I am going to  be  excommunicated  for
> this pronouncement.
>

Oh no, not here, no literary Pope present in this forum to my knowledge.

Otto

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