First ATD hatchet job

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

First of all, if you have (let's say this is a hypothectical) a character in a Pynchon novel who does things that are usually associated with the "bad guys" but is recognizably a character with genuine moral fortitude and described to us in terms that we usually associate with the "good guy", does that make the character round or flat? While you're at it, please note how the speech patterns of the characters have become increasingly individualized in Pynchon's novels as time (and the overall quality of Pynchon's writing) "progresses".

Secondly, we all know "history is written by the winners" and that Pynchon always saves his bets bits for the "preterite"; losers of such magnitude as to lose any "true historical record". Do Pynchon's elobrate fictional histories illuminate the political landscapes of the past usually described by "history" or do they distort it? Does promugating a "secret history" constitute a variety of conspiracy or is it a form of illumination?
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Daniel Julius" <daniel.julius at gmail.com>
> Couple things --
> 
> I agree with Morris that part of this criticism speaks directly to our
> previous discussion of "flat" v. "round" characters, particularly the part
> where he calls Pynchon "Manichean."  And yeah, I had to look that up, but I
> thought it was a novel way to accuse him of not fleshing out characters,
> esp. if you take as an indication of roundness the ability for characters to
> surprise the reader, to act out of accordance with what they have already
> been described as.  Clearly a Manichean should be incapable of doing this,
> because their characters will be emblems of either side of a binary system,
> and thus unchanging.
> 
> And secondly, I really bristle at this: "He believes in conspiracies, not
> histories."  Historiographically, I'm very interested in what we call
> history, and it seems like people kind of instinctively (ideologically)
> create a three-tier hierarchy of truthfulness -- veracity in descending
> order -- with Supposed Objective Truth (what *really* happened on top),
> followed by the Historical Record, followed lastly by Fiction (where
> conspiracies for this critic-feller are gonna lie, I'm sure).  But so
> Objective Truth is an unattainable construct, literally inaccessible
> immediately after it is completed, and so we have competing systems of
> representation with History against Fiction.  So what I think people like
> this dood forget is that both are representations, irrevocably divorced from
> historical truth, and therefore kind of on equal footing.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --
> Dan


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Subject: Re: First ATD hatchet job
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