Repost: The Big One

Tue Jul 15 14:14:23 CDT 2008

True enough.  It's not that TRP doesn't give us inside looks, it's just that
he doesn't rely on them.  He let's the reader work more often than not.  I
guess that's part of why he is difficult for some, delightful to others.

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 11:03 AM, <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

>          "Ian Livingston:
>           And if Oedipa is flat, I am really confused.
>
> Part of the reason CoL 49 is my favorite is that Via Oed we find ourselves
> inside the head of someone on the verge of revelation, with all the
> emotional turmoil and strangeness that goes into that experience of internal
> transformation.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Ian Livingston" <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> To: "David Payne" <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:10:20 +0000
> Subject: Re: Repost: The Big One
>
> Well,
>
> Maybe I'm confused about what makes a character "round."  Many authors,
> yes, offer characters from within, if you will, talking about their moral
> and intellectual struggles as if the author and therefore the reader were,
> in fact, occupying that character's ego.  Many other authors present
> characters that become quite well-rounded without ever getting inside the
> character's head.  Hemmingway comes quickly to mind.  Joyce, too, on
> occasion, and his smarter sister in crime, Virginia Woolf.  It seems to me
> that what makes a character more or less round is the degree of change that
> character evidences over the course of the narrative.  For instance, how
> much does Cyprian change, or deepen as we get to know him?  Frank?  Vibe?
> Dally?  Yash? Kit?  etc.  It seems to me some of these characters are more
> rounded than others, because we get to know them better and watch them
> change over time, deepen as individuals.  Vibe is clearly flat, stock.  He
> *is* the greed he is meant to portray and nothing more.
>
> The point is, moral struggle is not necessarily something we have to
> explicitly hear.  We can observe it.  When Yashmeen loses her ability to
> warp space and time, what do we know about her experience of that loss? (or
> gain?)  When people experience moral turmoil it really is rather rare that
> they are able to formulate the questions, much less explicitly contemplate
> the issues involved.  Why should it be otherwise with characters?  After
> all, characters are the issue of human intelligence, they are born of the
> workings of an individual mind, shadows cast on the cave wall by the
> interior light of the microcosmic Sol.  Is it not proper that they should
> resemble us?  I have often been alienated and dismayed by characters who
> seem to know too much about themselves and the world, who are not a little
> lost in things and acting largely on impulse, mostly mimetically.  It is
> something I especially like about Pynchon's characters that they are so
> often mute on the subject of subjective experience and, when we do see or
> hear their subjective experience, it is so often a sort of "Whoa!  What's
> happening here?"  Not some concise summary of the intellectual and moral
> consequences of everything a la Hesse or Frank Herbert, perhaps even Cormac
> McCarthy at times.  We do not, for instance, hear Cyprian's cognitive
> struggles over his decision to stay at the convent, to leave his worldly
> lovers in favor of a divine lover.  But we see that he changes as a result
> of the subjective turmoil.  He doesn't just jump ship, he is torn and
> decides.  Little as I identify with him at some levels, it is the *way* he
> negotiates his doubts that makes him a powerful, round character.
>
> But then, maybe I am mistaken about "roundness."
>
> And if Oedipa is flat, I am really confused.  Or Katje.  Or Pugnax, for
> that matter.
>
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 11:32 PM, David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
> 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.
>>
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Making the world a better place one message at a time.
>> http://www.imtalkathon.com/?source=EML_WLH_Talkathon_BetterPlace
>>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20080715/dc8a68ec/attachment-0001.html>