Concepts as characters (was: Why don't women read Pynchon?)

[terrance terrance]

>
>
> > Do P's characters have a core, a being, a consciousness that
> > renders them
> > unlike anyone else?... Do they have... deep emontional responses?
>
>No, nor do those of any other novelist. They are black marks on a white
>page; all the rest is what we bring to the party.

A major reader is an active and creative reader. No wallflower.

However, I'm not willing to credit the power and beauty of prose fiction to 
what a reader brings to the party.

While I'll agree that a book is little more than ink on paper unless a 
reader pick it up and read it, I am not willing to reduce the great works of 
literature to a Rorschach. Nor am I willing to ignore the author's 
arrangement of those black spots on paper. Great authors don't piss on their 
canvas, they select and arrange every drip on it.

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