Kick-Ass Thank You

[bekah]

Thanks.  I see it -  I read the many of Pynchon's characters the same way.

One idea which has been kind of floating around in my head for awhile 
is that if it's a four-some, do we have the father, son, holy ghost 
and lucifer the dark angel of revolution who pined for a bit more and 
was kicked out?  The name Lucy would have been too obvious, but she 
sure is bad,  a child of the storm,  fomenting rebellion and leaving 
(or getting kicked out of)  her father's home.   Just an idea I'm 
hoping to exorcize by posting.

Bekah


At 10:03 AM +0200 5/27/07, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:
>Bekah:
>
>>I agree with you,  Tore,  that Lake is uninteresting and a kind of 
>>"bad" character - at least as a character.   But why do you think 
>>Pynchon included her in the way he did?   Was it a balance to 
>>something?  Was it to implicate the Gods?  Was it to throw some sex 
>>in?
>
>Ha! Good question, and I wish I had a good answer. Lake obviously 
>has a number of functions in AtD. She is one of four Traverse 
>children (and the number four may very well be significant here, as 
>in four dimensions, or four corners of the compass), and her 
>behavior shows some of the ramifications of Webb's remoteness when 
>he was alive and his absence after he's killed. She's also, I guess, 
>meant to set up an echo to Vineland's children of the storm, and - 
>as Laura pointed out - there's probably also an echo of Gottfried in 
>there somewhere.
>
>So I guess that her "function" was pretty clearly outlined in 
>Pynchon's mind as he wrote AtD, but perhaps she never really moved 
>beyond this function? In a novel with hundreds of characters, one 
>can't really expect the author to care as much for all of them, so 
>perhaps Pynchon simply lost interest in Lake? (A wild guess, of 
>course). Perhaps he couldn't be bothered to flesh her out beyond her 
>intended function in the plot? He may have intended Lake's 
>shallowness, but I doubt, however, that he intended her to be as 
>uninteresting as many of us apparently find her...
>
>Like Ande, I don't primarily read Pynchon for subtle psychological 
>characterizations (although I tend to find his characters very 
>interesting). Usually, there is so much else going on (beautiful 
>language, exotic locales, historical analysis, zany humour, 
>elaborate metaphos, complex patternings, a-and CHASE SCENES - in 
>BALLOONS!!!!), and one isn't too bothered with Pynchon's sometimes 
>less than three-dimensional characterizations: Psychological nuances 
>don't really seem to be the point in most of Pynchon's work. In the 
>Lake-sections of AtD, though, they DO seem to be the main point. The 
>prairie sections of AtD don't seem to have as much going for them 
>as, say, the European or Asian sections, where the characters' 
>actions take place on an elaborate (and elaborately described) 
>world-historical backdrop. In the prairie sections, however, the 
>interpersonal drama and the subtle psychological nuances seem to be 
>the main point: No Chums there, no sinister forebodings of WW1, no 
>ominous mayonnaise factories or manned torpedos, etc. Just the 
>rather featureless prairie and the interpersonal drama between a 
>handful of characters. If Lake had played her part in one of the 
>richer sections of AtD, I doubt we would have really noticed her 
>shallowness. In the prairie sections, however, the characters are 
>really foregrounded, they take front and center stage. And Lake 
>seems to be too flimsy a construction to carry the weight Pynchon 
>tries to put on her shoulders. She seems, first and foremost, to be 
>a function in some thematical equation, and while mathematical (and 
>thematical) equations are fine for back in Göttingen, they seem 
>somewhat inadequate for the intense personal drama Pynchon probably 
>intended here.
>
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