IVIV (1) "She came along the alley and up the back steps ..."

[Mark Kohut]

Robin,

Love that justthisfaraway from being Doc's voice....yes, it is "as if" the narrator is a kind of better angel....he establishes reliability for many things when we wonder about Doc's doper brain.

later,

mark







--- On Tue, 8/25/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (1) "She came along the alley and up the back steps ..."
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2009, 8:59 AM
> On Aug 25, 2009, at 5:19 AM, Tore Rye
> Andersen wrote:
> 
> > John:
> > 
> >> Tore's point about IV's opening line being a
> better fit for the
> >> ATD/M&D/GR 'abstract' category, rather than
> the direct,
> >> character-introducing ones, is interesting,
> particularly in light of
> >> recent discussions here on how to categorise
> Pynchon's novels. It's
> >> good to see a categorisation criteria introduced
> which places IV in
> >> such exalted company!
> > 
> > Well, more like a category unto its own, is what I was
> trying to say.
> 
> One thing that's curious, novel, & a new category for
> Pynchon in this novel is a third-person narrator attempting
> to do the work of a first person narrator. Philip Marlowe
> is, of course, the first person doing the narration in all
> of Chandler's novels. I was so surprised to find that
> Inherent Vice was narrated from this semi-omniscient view.
> Perhaps it makes the result more like a move script, but the
> way the novel's point of view moves, we have a third-person
> voice that sticks close to Doc, one that never really gets
> very far away from him. More to the point, that third person
> voice seems to be riding the emotional waves of Doc, is
> justthisfaraway from being Doc's voice.
> 
> Perhaps the narrator is Doc's better angel.
> 
>