Repost: The Big One

[Mark Kohut]

Well.

I believe E. M. Forster first articulated the 'flat' 'found' distinction
in Aspects of the Novel.

Flat means ruled (on the page) by an idee' fixe or couple-maybe three. They don't develop in the book. Many great novels, full of the roundest
characters, are full of flat characters, too....Proust, even Austen, others. To set off. To make those social/political points. Dickens is
full of vital flatheads, so to speak. 

Round means qualities, characteristics, thru psychological presentation [james, say] and actions full of breadth and depth...and in a full novel, development [change]....."capable of surprising in convincing ways" as someone has said. "Like the people we know", someone has said.

My problem in sorting that out is: I know flat people; I am a flat person to many. Therefore, in the fictions I inhabit, what are we?


 


--- On Tue, 7/15/08, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Repost: The Big One
> To: "David Payne" <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 1:08 PM
> 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.
> >
> >
> >
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