Interlude: If James Wood Supposes...

[Michael Bailey]

On 2/5/08, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>
>>
> I guess I read Pynchon for the "pyrotechnics" but at the same time long
> for characters I could care about and a decent plot once in a while.
>

People say that & I never get why...

I'm trying to think of any characters in lit - I almost said, "in lit
or in life"
 - more engaging than the figure/ground phenomenon that is a Pynchon-character.

Ok, there's of course the Furry Freak Brothers
and Richard Jury's social set in Martha Grimes's England,
-- and, ok, all the characters in that one story by Buddy Glass, every
one of whom had a Heidelberg dueling scar -

but for characters built from traits and effects one sees
in real people, elegantly derived personalities set against
a formfitted environment, who awaken useful trains of thought
and sentiment suitable to the context of the story -

- characters shown through details, insightful wordings that bear multiple
axial loads, as they develop in relation to each other, their
experiences and the world (history, geography, chemistry)
which they encounter -

- characters who don't annoy, cloy, buzzkill or try to be more than they are...

"look for...the Pynchon label..."

and plot - eehnyeh -
 any of the oeuvre could be adapted to tell successfully
around a campfire, or just read aloud in installments...
if there has to be more plot than that, no doubt it could be found too