Byzantine Grammatical Form

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon could have taken the second sentence and reworked its focus
and perhaps gained a more coherent flow: A troop of irregulars in red
Zouave-style hats and trousers wheeled helplessly with their mounts
confused and terrified. They wheeled with  who knew what negligible
increase of anxiety, surely enough to start them shooting at one
another or at innocent civilians. Conversely, Pynchon could have put
in place such odd sentences as a tool for emphasis. The actual
phrasing of the sentence above demands that the reader reread it by
the inclusion of the third clause and its dependent nature.

I think the writer brings too many assumptions to his piece.....I believe
in the 'emphasis' reason......the sentence in question captures an all-at-once explanatory immediacy, so to speak, vs. a distanced declarative statement--a past tense LINEAR statement---which I think Pynchon chose not to write.....


--- On Thu, 11/6/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Byzantine Grammatical Form
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 9:49 AM
> November 5th, 2008
> Byzantine Grammatical Form
> 
> 
> While the list of reasons that Thomas Pynchon's Against
> the Day could
> be considered labyrinthian is long and tired, it is the
> subject of
> grammar and of grammatical form that seems to be most
> notable, second
> only to the novel's plot. Pynchon, without any interest
> in clarity,
> chooses to run the reader's mind (and eyes) exhausted
> with many
> cumulative sentences that talk on and on for lines. These
> stretches of
> form do not serve the text in the raw, colloquial way of
> Hubert Selby
> Jr., nor in the dogmatically sound prose of Cormac
> McCarthy; instead,
> the clauses are joined too tightly by faulted commas that
> grip and
> hold together passages that could (and should) flow quite
> remarkably
> from the page.
> 
> In taking on the needless task of subtly emulating various
> styles of
> popular writing, Pynchon drags along his meandering
> delivery of
> description and exposition. And while this sort of homage
> could have
> benefited the reader by granting some sense of nostalgia or
> education
> in relation to the styles, Pynchon instead further dilutes
> his
> intentions by making his Horatio Alger-styled narration
> sound very
> much like his Jack London and so forth. Whether Pynchon
> should have
> transgressed from his own conventions and created wholly
> unique forms
> for each of his different literary modes is debatable.
> Likely though,
> his choice of consistency is the most sound factor no
> however
> disrupting to the prose styles it may be.
> 
> There are sections where the form lauds itself; Pynchon
> succeeds in
> his brief, descriptive segments: "Track and trusswork
> went sagging
> into the dust-choked arroyo."  And he fails in longer
> constructions:
> "A troop of irregulars in red Zouave-style hats and
> trousers, their
> mounts confused and terrified, wheeled helplessly, with who
> knew what
> negligible increase of anxiety surely enough to start them
> shooting at
> one another, not to mention at innocent civilians."
> Pynchon lets his
> narration take a more vocal role by cutting the more
> oratorial
> paragraphs into beds of fragment upon fragment: "As if
> looking out
> through holes in a mask, the eyes moved and gleamed,
> shockingly alive
> in flesh that might as well have been artificial. Seemed to
> be
> whispering. Warning that there was some grave imbalance in
> the
> structure of the world, which would have to be
> corrected."
> 
> Pynchon could have taken the second sentence and reworked
> its focus
> and perhaps gained a more coherent flow: A troop of
> irregulars in red
> Zouave-style hats and trousers wheeled helplessly with
> their mounts
> confused and terrified. They wheeled with  who knew what
> negligible
> increase of anxiety, surely enough to start them shooting
> at one
> another or at innocent civilians. Conversely, Pynchon could
> have put
> in place such odd sentences as a tool for emphasis. The
> actual
> phrasing of the sentence above demands that the reader
> reread it by
> the inclusion of the third clause and its dependent nature.
> 
> Though there is truly no absolute way to stylize the syntax
> of one's
> English when looking to achieve indirect expression, it
> seems that
> Pynchon's choices for Against the Day seem only to
> compliment the
> writer's admonitory views on the postmodern novel. His
> over-articulateness forms the many-threaded backbone of a
> novel both
> awesome in scope and demand, and Pynchon's voice is
> resolute enough
> that the reader can sense his tireless effort to tell the
> metafictional tale.
> 
> http://www.notjasoncook.com/2008/11/05/byzantine-grammatical-form/