"heart" in Pynchon's novels

[Mark Kohut]

As Doug says, we could have long discussions re the meaning of heart....

I agree with this perspective on what is there in the first three books to compensate for less "heart".....

But, heart is family and more----TRP loaded it into AtD...AND.....he traced
it to many of its human sources, imho....

--- On Thu, 8/27/09, Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> From: Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: "heart" in Pynchon's novels
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 10:34 AM
> Mark Kohut:
> > There is more 'heart', and its tracing to sources in
> AtD than in any other of Pynchon's novels....
> > 
> > And what is Doc?
> 
> ... I think it’s because VL and M&D have family and
> friendship respectively as the core thematic impetus of the
> narratives that there does seem to be much more “heart”
> – empathy, engagement, sentiment, what have you – than
> even GR, Lot 49 or V. The three earlier works do compensate
> with their other unique and remarkable attributes for this
> lack of … “warmth”…  at the level of character
> and situation, however.
> 
> best regards
> 
> 
> >> > From: Rob Jackson <jbor@[omitted]>
> >> > Subject: Re: Van Meter
> >> > To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
> >> > Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 9:38 AM
> >> > > Zoyd is no Van Meter, who, in
> >> > turn, is no Frenesi/Flash
> >> >
> >> > Yes, this hierarchy seems about right, and
> even though many
> >> > of Flash's priors aren't spelled out in the
> narrative,
> >> > he is probably a notch beyond Frenesi, at
> least in terms of
> >> > "criminal" activity and the extent/s to which
> he has been
> >> > "turned". Flash's past is detailed only very
> vaguely because
> >> > it's the unwritten code in this milieu when
> referring to
> >> > "miscellaneous folks in out of the night"
> (8), "politicals
> >> > fleein' from different jurisdictions" (25),
> and so forth, to
> >> > couch the references to illicit activity in
> ambiguous terms
> >> > and not name names, which is why Zoyd doesn't
> ever
> >> > explicitly drop Van Meter's name as a snitch.
> And which is
> >> > also why "snitching" is such a big deal,
> breaking that
> >> > code.
> >> >
> >> > But there does seem to be a little bit of
> parallelling
> >> > going on as well: Zoyd with wise-cracking
> Prairie and
> >> > Frenesi and Flash with precocious young
> Justin. It's a
> >> > typical sit-com conceit: one of VL's themes,
> underdeveloped
> >> > as many of them are in the novel, seems to be
> that "the
> >> > child is father of the man". The later
> descriptions
> >> > recalling the time that Zoyd and VM looked
> after Prairie as
> >> > a baby after Z had escaped from Brock Vond's
> clutches are
> >> > also very sympathetic.
> >> >
> >> > At the end of the novel, even despite Zoyd's
> hypocrisy and
> >> > complicity, Frenesi's sleeping with and
> working for the
> >> > enemy, and Flash's shadowy past and present,
> they're all
> >> > ultimately welcomed back into the family fold
> of the
> >> > "Traverse-Becker annual reunion". So there is
> a sense of
> >> > forgiveness there as well, even for Frenesi
> and Flash. It's
> >> > sentimental and cheesy and akin to the
> obligatory sit-com
> >> > pay-off, but self-consciously so, and there
> is a degree of
> >> > "heart" in VL which seems to be absent from
> the two most
> >> > recent novels.
> >> >
> >> > all best
> 
>