Repost: The Big One

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I've never been bothered by the lack of "roundedness" of TRP's characters until ATD.  As Bekah said, he's more interested in exploring themes, and I don't have a problem with that.  He's often done pretty well with his characters.  Slothrop is pretty endearing, as a kind of goofy, good-natured hedonist, and I think TRP did a great job of portraying the friendship and even love between Mason and Dixon.  The final scene where Mason goes to visit the invalid Dixon is extremely moving.

What disappoints me about ATD is the lack of a protagonist (or even a dual protagonist, as in V or M&D).  I understand the intellectual choice:  he's writing about anarchy and chaos and [obliquely, (I'm guessing) relativity and quantum theory], so the lack of a central protagonist or even narrator emphasizes these themes.  Still, there are too many characters with too much overlap between them.  What roles do Reef and Kit and Dally play that couldn't be picked up by others?  He needs the bodies to circumnavigate the globe but why not have Yasmeen seek Shambhala (and her father) in Central Asia, ultimately encountering Tunguska, wrestling with math as a spiritual versus a destructive force.  Cyprian can have the Balkans:  the encroachment of technology (the Interdikt) on the indigenous and spiritual.  Frank has Mexico: when does anarchism cross the line from justice to murder as he grapples with the weight of needing to avenge his father's death. Tossing Reef, Kit and Dally into the mix obscures rather than enlightens these central issues.

Just a thought, anyway.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>
>A few obs. 
>
>I have often thought that the non-rounded characters in much of Pynchon's work is because we real human beings aren't too "round" in our current degraded world,in Pynchon's worledview.
>
>What about Mason & Dixon? Are they not among the 'round" characters? And is it because they lived when they could be, so to speak? I do think that is part of Pynchon's full works view.
>
>A: Yes, there is an narrator, an authorial presence in Pynchon's work that
>contains an (often moral) perspective that is NOT his characters' perspectives. Often, it is what James, (Henry) called an effaced narrator
>(or limited omniscience) wherein what we are being told by the narrator is the same as the (textual) omniscience of the character. It does mean we have to read with full attentionn to sort,I think, no surprise here.
>
>[example: In V., when the photographer interrupts Benny in bed right before the big O, as the "narrator" speaks Benny's mind. ]
>
>Against the Day is LOADED with perspectives on the characters from LEVELS of narrator consciousness, "omniscience", since parts of the book are another Chums adventure, a written story. Most characters' stories are told by a narrator, an author, who has/embeds a perspective on them---and, as in most fiction, we judge by moral standards as well. We have yet to see
>most of the author's perspectives on many of the characters fully, I say speaking for myself at least.
>
>
>--- On Tue, 7/15/08, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>> Subject: Re: Repost: The Big One
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 7:03 AM
>> David Payne wrote:
>> > On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 (23:44:27 -0400), Laura
>> (kelber at mindspring.com) wrote:
>> >
>> >   
>> >> If you're expecting an impassioned defense of
>> TRP's ability to draw well-rounded characters, you
>> won't be getting it from me.
>> >>     
>> >
>> > Well, no, actually, I wasn't, which is why I said
>> it was a joke, satire.
>> >
>> > And that's twice I've apparently
>> unintentionally implied something that I did not mean to
>> convey.
>> >
>> > I'll try asking questions for the third time and
>> then just shut up, which seems, perhaps, to be desired.
>> >
>> > Sticking with the topic at hand, don't most
>> writers create rounded characters by presenting a moral
>> dilemma and then demonstrating the character's inner
>> struggle and the resulting moral evolution?
>> >
>> > Does Pynchon do this?
>> >
>> > If not, why? If so, where and why? (Some postings have
>> already answered this as "yes"; specifically, both
>> Laura and Mark pointed to Frank and the train crash on page
>> 985.)
>> >
>> > Finally, does Pynchon's moral view point extend
>> beyond the reaction of his characters' individual
>> personal reactions to their individual dilemmas?
>> >
>> > Please take my comments a face value, b/c my son
>> bought ice cream from an ice-cream truck for the first time
>> yesterday. Boy-oh-boy was he ever excited to learn that
>> people actually drive around in trucks full of ice cream on
>> hot summer days, trying to unload their merchandise.
>> >
>> >
>> >   
>> 
>> I want to commend David P. for attempting--and succeeding
>> to the extent 
>> humanly possible--to bring some intelligibility to this
>> thread. It had 
>> been such a muddle. The suggested change in terminology set
>> forth in his 
>> previous post is helpful.  I still haven't figured out
>> how to say what i 
>> personally  think on the topic.  I do pretty well know what
>> I DON'T think.
>> 
>> P.
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