VLVL Prairie

[jbor]

> I understand that reviewers were quick to disparage his characters as
> "cartoonish" when comparing Pynchon to so-called realist novelists, such
> as Bellow, Updike, the Roths, JC Oates. Pynchon's characters, which
> pointed to themselves as signs within a fictional work, and played with
> the plasticity of the medium beyond the constraints of rigid traditional
> mimesis, seemed deficient by readers who flat out misunderstood or else,
> understanding, fought a rear guard action against him.
> 
> Twenty or more years later, in what sense is it now meaningful to
> continue to mischaracterize Pynchon's characters? Instead of
> throwing him into a set of conventions he attacked, why not focus on him
> according to his own terms, or attempt to understand what those terms are?

Zoyd in a dress is cartoonish. Hector in the pizza joint is cartoonish. In
this chapter, Ralph Wayvone is pretty cartoonish, "Two Ton" Carmine
Torpidini is cartoonish, and DL singing that she's a "floo-zy with-an
U-U-zi" is cartoonish.

As I wrote: "It's difficult [for some more than others, obviously] to fathom
the situation or take it all seriously because many of the characters are
often cartoonish (Prairie is perhaps the exception), the situations are so
exaggerated, and the tone of the narration is flip or offhand for the most
part", but Prairie's situation, viewed as a "real" one, is pretty dramatic
and terrifying and she's actually holding it all together quite well. It's
in the context of what Prairie tells her about her situation that DL holds
her tongue, prevaricates, "temporize[s]".

best