Repost: The Big One

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Bekah, this is an excellent discussion of why well-rounded characters are beside the point in Pynchon's books.  I'd still argue, though, that there are too many main characters whose roles overlap in ATD.  In The Brothers Karamazov, for example, the three brothers symbolize body, mind, and spirit and are markedly different in personality.  Reef, Frank and Kit have some minor differences of temperament and occupation and differ in their travels, but ultimately they're not very different.  It doesn't matter whether they're flat or round, it does matter that they're too similar.  

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Bekah <bekker2 at mac.com>
>Sent: Jul 15, 2008 6:25 PM
>To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: Repost: The Big One
>
>First,  I love PYnchon and I love Oedpia so there is no criticism in  
>the following post!
>
>   To use flat or rounded characters has no effect on the value of a  
>work unless the author used flat ones where they should have been  
>rounded because the themes are of personal change or something but  
>you never do get to "know" the main character - disgusting books.   I  
>speak of "knowing" a character in terms of intimate knowing - not  
>who, what, where, when - but the whys and wherefores of her.
>
>  Pynchon is perfect in his use of flattish characters.   We don't  
>"know" them and "care" about them.  We don't cry when they cry or  
>rejoice at their success.  We're not scared for them.  They're  
>always  "characters in novel."  We can describe these characters in a  
>sentence or two (we might need pages to tell what they do).
>
>Rounded characters have a large emotional aspect,  their  
>personalities are developed as being unique and changeable.  We feel  
>like we "know" them as individual people and care about them and what  
>happens to them.    It takes pages to describe them and their ways  
>but maybe only a page or two to tell what they actually do in the novel.
>
>(Btw,  these terms are from E.M. Forster back in the 1920s or  
>something and not meant for post-mod lit.  Even he did not disparage  
>flat characters - it's just an alternative an author makes about  
>where the emphasis of  a book will be.  He said the characters of  
>Dickens were somewhat flat.
>
>I think that only Tolstoy in War & Peace was able to deal  
>successfully and so deeply with "big issues"  and themes (history -  
>fate) while developing fully developed and rounded characters as  
>well.   The careful reader "knows" Pierre and Natasha and shoot,   
>even Napoleon.   If I were to describe Pierre I could tell me about  
>him as a person.  If I described Oedipa I would basically tell you  
>her demographics and put far more importance on her detection and  
>what she did.   I'm not going to say that  Pynchon is the Tolstoy of  
>the 20th / 21st century.  We won't have one like him again.
>
>
>I think whether or not you see Oedipa as  a "flattish" or "roundish"  
>character is in comparison to what else you've read.  If you've been  
>reading a lot of pomo or sci-fi or detective novels she's as rounded  
>as most.  If you've been reading Middlemarch she is totally flat -  
>like many post-modern characters to a person reading 19th century  
>lit.   The flat/round thing is a  "range," not a black/white deal and  
>it's relative to other characters and subjective - in the reader's  
>response (to an extent).
>
>
>Oedipa starts out from Kinneret-Among-The-Pines as a typical  
>"Tupperware" housewife with a rather boring but hipster type  
>husband.  This id announcing that she is a  middle-class,  married  
>and moderately young and hip woman.    So far I take  Oedipa to be a  
>"type" character and therefore "flattish."    I don't really know  
>"her."    I know hundreds like her.  That's the point - she is  
>"everywoman."   Oedipa's personality and character have to take  
>backstage for the plot to get about its business developing the  
>themes.  She has a personality and a character but so does a  
>detective in a crime novel - She's not the point of the book so  
>Pynchon doesn't w.a.s.t.e.  a lot of words in developing her as a  
>unique and interesting character.     Her development is not a part  
>of the plot or themes.  The themes which Pynchon explores,  using  
>Oedipa,  as a vehicle,  are paranoia, conspiracy,  reality vs  
>fiction,  etc.     In MY reading of this book,  she's never  
>emotionally fleshed out,  she springs forth as fully developed  as  
>she's going to get in this book and her character doesn't really  
>change much (find redemption).
>
>The text deals with  her intellectual processes as she works from  
>scene to scene trying to make sense of and follow the threads of  
>Pierce Invararity's  will.  The theme has nothing to do with a change  
>in Oedipa (although we can probably assume she does) - it has to do  
>with conspiracies and all the things she tries to track down or sees  
>or intuits and stuff.  Hers is an intellectual challenge - like a  
>detective -  not a moral/personal development challenge.
>
>
>  Bekah
>babbling
>
>
>
>
>On 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.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>> Date: July 15, 2008 10:10:20 AM PDT
>> To: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>> 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.
>>
>>
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