ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[Paul Mackin]

On Feb 28, 2007, at 3:07 PM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

> Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> I do rather disagree with the contention that AtD draws the  reader
>> INto story. Relative to GR perhaps it does.  But making any real
>> effort at drawing the reader IN, making him  care very much about
>> what happens to  the characters,  isn't  IMO the way  Pynchon works.
>> He certainly doesn't "work" for me that  way. It's not that I  doubt
>> his being  a brilliant writer, or that I didn't enjoy much that was
>> in AtD, or that I would not find even more to enjoy upon another
>> reading. There is always plenty  to be gotten out of a Pynchon novel.
>> It's not engagement with any of the characters, however.
>
> And then David Morris wrote:
>
>> I pretty much agree with you Paul.  Pynchon's characters often do
>> things that make me not "feel" them as "real."  We have to ponder  
>> what
>> are their motives, and clues are laid to unravel the dynamics at work
>> and why the choices are made, and I think that is Pynchon's goal.
>
> In fact I pretty much agree with both of you - if, Paul, it is  
> permissible to "agree" with disembodied electronic "voices" that  
> hold no more reality for me than Pynchon's fictional characters ;-)

I'm never feel very real when I'm posting to the p-list. .

> When I speak of Pynchon drawing readers into his texts, I'm not so  
> much thinking of the old-fashioned way of drawing the reader into  
> the story by making him identify with and care about the  
> characters: "Golly, I sure hope Rosalie will follow her heart and  
> marry Harry the honest farmhand instead of the evil Count who is  
> trying to cheat her out of her inheritance"-sort of thing.
>

I'd prefer a less childish example of reader engagement with the   
characters in a story. Say the way, in Roth's "The Plot Against  
America," we REALLY REALLY want the book to end with the "Roth"  
family somehow restored to its pre-Lindberghian happiness? I didn't  
have anything like that emotion  about the resolution of AtD. I only  
admired the symmetry of it.


> What I was trying to say in my previous post was that Pynchon  
> creates works of such atounding complexity that in a sense they  
> constitute small worlds in themselves. Remember that small bit from  
> the dustjacket of AtD (penned by Pynchon himself): "Maybe it's not  
> the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world  
> might be."

But in retrospect isn't a lot of what he meant is that the book will  
contain magic and  mysticism and contrary to fact physics?

> Much so-called realistic fiction that draws readers into the story  
> by letting him identify with the characters is anything but  
> realistic.Such novels often present us with the traditional - and  
> deeply artificial - linear and Aristotelean plot, with a beginning,  
> a middle, and an end, and we seem almost genetically predisposed to  
> be 'drawn into' such stories.

That's why whenever we use the terms "realistic" or "realism" in  
connection with fiction  we  put them in quotes.

> Pynchon's fiction, on the other hand, doesn't come in those neat  
> little prepackaged plots that are so effective at drawing readers  
> into the story. "Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any  
> kind of sense at day's end" we hear in GR (p. 204), and in his big  
> novels Pynchon certainly doesn't juggle events into any kind of  
> sense for us. Novels such as GR and AtD are big and messy, they're  
> complex and confusing, they're saturated with information, things  
> are not always resolved, and when we meet a character for the first  
> time, we've no way of knowing whether he'll turn out to be  
> important, or whether he'll disappear again in a couple of pages.  
> Such complexity, such density of detail is IMO more real than most  
> realistic fiction in that it approaches the complexity of the world  
> we have to move through every day. Real life is messy, it's  
> saturated with information, things are not always resolved, and  
> when we meet a new person we've no chance of knowing (as we do in  
> the kind of fiction that more easily lets us identify with the  
> characters) whether he or she will turn out to be a soulmate or  
> whether s/he will disappear just as quickly as s/he appeared.

All these things are fine but Pynchon's fiction  in its way is just  
as contrived as anyone else's.  He makes the same "shameless" use of  
coincidence as 19th century "realists" did,  or Proust to name a 20th  
century author.  Not that there is anything shameful about  the  
"shameless" use of coincidence. It's the only way he can connect up  
his multiplicity of  characters, separated worldwide as they are.  
Another way the book is obviously contrived is the already mentioned  
neatness of  the ending. But of course, as you indicate, such things  
are not of concern to Pynchon. He's after something else. I like   
what that something else is.  But don't ask me to care very much  
about Dally, Stray, or  Yash. OK, I'm a softy.  I did enjoy the way  
Lake was able to finally shed her old man. I liked Lake. There was  
something very touching about her loyalty to that marriage made in  
hell she'd gotten herself into.


>
> I tend to believe that Pynchon's big novels are deliberate attempts  
> at creating microcosms that are the formal equivalent of the  
> richness, complexity, terror and beauty of the world we move  
> through. Such encyclopedic narratives, to use Mendelson's nice  
> phrase, perhaps don't so much draw the reader into the story as  
> situate him in a confusing textual environment that mirrors both  
> the confusing fictional world the characters move through and our  
> own confusing reality. Perhaps Pynchon doesn't so much let us  
> identify with his characters as place us on the same level as them.  
> They and we are faced with many of the same choices and encounter  
> many of the same moral quandaries as we move through the fictional  
> world/the text, respectively. When Pynchon in GR speaks of "the  
> path you must create by yourself alone in the dark" (136), I think  
> he speaks of both the characters' trajectory through the text, the  
> act of reading that text, and of our life outside that text. The  
> structure of the text is a formal reenactment of the world  
> described in that text, and that world mirrors our own. Reading a  
> novel by Pynchon thus becomes not an act of consumption, where a  
> more or less passive reader is 'drawn into' the text, but an act of  
> active participation in its textual world. It's perhaps not so much  
> a matter of engaging with the characters, as you rightly point out,  
> Paul, as of engaging with the problems they have to engage with.

I do not disagree. Reading Pynchon requires effort and commitment. I  
detest  the consumer society as much as anyone.

> In that sense, however, I DO think it is perfectly possible to  
> identify with the characters, and I DO wish that Frank hadn't blown  
> up that damn train.

OK I'll bite and try to enter into the story. This is only  
lighthearted chit chat.  I hope it won't be misunderstood. Here it  
goes. I do tend to find disapproving of the Webbs' admittedly  
murderous  behavior a bit reactionary.  Within the  context of  the  
story, that is.  Violent action is all these people have. The union  
isn't going  to  help them.  Renouncing their brand of "anarchism"  
under the circumstances would be, for them, moving backwards. A   
return to the life of happy robots,  To  push  C. Wright Mills'  
phrase a few years back in time.

Not saying any p-lister  is a reactionary.

Anyway cheers and continued good reading.

P.