Can Pynchon write (yet)?

[Paul Nightingale]

Billy Genocide writes: "... it has always seemed to me that character
development is simply Pynchon's weak point".

Two ways of answering this, I suppose, without repetition (and I shall fail
to be succinct, whatever).

Firstly, the above statement implies that character development in P can be
measured against cd elsewhere.

Secondly, it implies that cd in P can be measured against other aspects of
the P-text.

And hereinafter, cd = all the stuff that gets characters from first page to
last (words on the page, nothing three-dimensional here).

I'll go with the latter point and recall the predictable response when I
suggested a few years ago that, in some respects, VL was a more
sophisticated novel than GR. Note: I didn't say it was better, but in some
respects (handy little phrase, that, so easy to miss when going for the
jugular) more sophisticated. By which I meant the way the narrative was
structured (and M&D carries on the same approach to
narrative-as-storytelling). So I'm not suggesting that VL is 'better than'
GR; but P had moved on (and see the mid-80s essays/intros for exploratory
texts in the same vein). Therefore, cd in VL and M&D has a different
function to cd in GR: in the latter novels we are rather more aware of
characters telling stories (or put another way, storytelling at the level of
characterisation).

Another point about GR, if you want to talk about weaknesses. It is a huge
achievement, certainly, for someone who had yet to hit 40; but in some
respects (there goes that handy little phrase again) the achievement is
flawed. It is a young man's novel, with elements of misogyny (P as a man of
his times), and a brash (and I would offer conscious) attempt to write the
ultimate novel. On every page he seems to be saying: Follow this! The
writing is calculated (these are all very impressionistic statements--no
scientific measurement here, folks) in a way that is absent from both VL and
M&D.

Reading GR I've always remembered something one of my film teachers said. I
asked him if Citizen Kane was the greatest film ever made. He said it might
be the most brilliant film ever made, but not the greatest. Being pretty
stupid at the time I didn't understand him for at least five seconds.
Welles, like P, set out to have the last word: Follow this! I feel the same
way about GR, and GR is to M&D as CK is to Touch of Evil.