Characters and caring in general and VLVL.

[Ghetta Life]

>From: Prsamsa at aol.com
>
>Here's a theory, from the hip, following reading of a DMorris poston not 
>caring much for VN after Lolita.
>
>The reason VL is harder to read and assimilate is because we care more 
>about the characters than any since Oedipas Maas.  In GR, we have 
>beenweaned away from caring about most characters, since TSlothrop "simply" 
>loses his temporaral bandwith, his closest confidants (Squallidozzi, T 
>Mucker-Maffick, Katje, Geli) either disappear with no further explanation 
>or betray him somehow--shameless self-backpat--much like Chrissie is seen 
>to have done to him by returning to Jules Siegel, in Lineland--
>
>In all TP's work before the second half of GR, which I assume was written 
>years after the first part, TP's characters fall into bed, fall into fun, 
>fall hard for someone-- perhaps Mimi Farina, going by scant evidence--but 
>they don't seem to have had their hearts broken, as Roger Mexico, lightly, 
>and TSlotrop, rendingly, seem to have in the more mature, later pages in 
>GR. That makes it easier to care for the characters AS  characters and not 
>fictional constructs.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree that VL has characters that we care about more 
than those in GR (and if it did that the novel would be "harder to 
assimilate").  Even at the very end of GR most readers care very much for 
Tyrone.  And the characters in VL have been noted by some here to be 
short-hand cardboard beings.  I don't think your thesis holds water.

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