Repost: The Big One

[Ian Livingston]

Boy, I missed out on some fun stuff while I was out in the world yesterday!
You see, I fail to live one of those boring, stultified lives.  I am a
caretaker on a very remote ranch near Big Sur and everyday is new, filled
with new challenges both emotional (I live alone, far from people) and
cognitive (I read extensively and grapple with ideas from plumbing to Plato)
so flattish life would not serve me well.  Perhaps that is why I find round
characters everywhere.  To paraphrase Joyce again: we meet ourselves in the
world around us.   That is also a point raised in Jung:  the individual is
lost in systems (please watch "Network" again - all this is argued
beautifully in that masterpiece), but the system exists ONLY by fact of
individual participation.  Systems do not have a dominant monad, a central
unifying consciousness.  They cannot feel, invent, think independently of
the individuals within them.  I see this happening in our boy's work.  The
individuals move through systems, alchemically shifting nuances as needed to
negotiate the byways through the complex world of non-nations and retain
their identities.  I failed to get lost between the brothers Traverse
primarily because of the elements associated with each, though each in fact
requires the association of all the elements.  So, yes, the idea dominates,
but the individual is formed by his temperament.  I agree with Bekah that
there is no black and white flat v. round nature, but I would argue a more
Taoist read, that apparent anarchy is simply the impure nature of worldly
things.  And I would argue it is the impurity that makes each character and
system more or less amenable to us as readers.

On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Paul.
>
> I do think I know, worked with some people every day for years, and they
> were fragments of people, just as are some in GR...
>
> And in Pynchon's world of doubled down meanings, think of the upside of
> 'everything connects"....a wholeness beyond fragmentation....
>
> mark
>
>
> --- On Wed, 7/16/08, 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: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 1:22 PM
> > Mark Kohut wrote:
> > > 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.
> > >
> > You may be on to something, Mark.
> >
> > I remember back about 40 years ago being told that we were
> > ONE-dimensional men.
> >
> > In Pynchon's world, however, we are surely more like
> > hyper-paranoid men.
> >
> > What kind of distinctive character trait would required for
> > that?
> >
> > Guess I'm talking about GR--don't know what the
> > hell happened after that.
> >
> > Perhaps characters in the True Land of Paranoia don't
> > need much
> > character--we can pretty much forget shapes.
> >
> > Getting buffeted around by all those interconnecting forces
> > (everything
> > connects) doesn't leave much room for individual
> > discretion.
> >
> > I have long suspected that reading too much Pynchon can
> > make people act
> > kind of peculiarly.
> >
> > For example, some of us adopt the phrase "everything
> > connects" as sort
> > of a motto.
> >
> > That gives me pause.  A little tiny pause anyway.
> >
> > What if the satirical origins get lost?
> >
> > It might be wise to take a lesson from the case of the
> > cover of this
> > issue of The New Yorker.
> >
> > Some folks may not realize they aren't in Kansas
> > anymore. (not too many
> > I hope)
> >
> > But getting back to "everything connects," yes a
> > lot of things ARE
> > connected, and we should we conscious of this,  but there
> > are still a
> > lot of other things that are not.
> >
> > To believe that everything is connected can be the mark of
> > a psychotic.
> > (a real one)
> >
> > A well-meaning sane person who thinks too inclusively here
> > runs the
> > danger of not picking up on the connections that really
> > exist.
> >
> > I duuno where this is going  . . . . except I did want to
> > let Mark know
> > I liked his idea.
> >
> > P.
>
>
>
>
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