IV Blithedale Romance (Chase & Tanner)

[David Morris]

As far as I'm concerned, all this discussion re. whether IV, or any
other Pynchon novel, is Romance is akin to those who want to discuss a
novel's merits because its picaresque.  Whether a novel fits into some
one's definition of a genre or a tradition is of little value in
assessing the merits of the specific novel.  It obviously has to stand
on its own separate from any genre or tradition, even if it is
consciously a commentary on any such tradition.  Postmodernism was
barely a concept, let alone a movement when V or GR were published.
Both were ground-breaking and stand today because they are great unto
themselves.

David Morris

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 12:25 PM, alice
wellintown<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Tanner Oxford Introduction to Hawthorne's BR, available on-line,
> is a great Introduction to IV. Just re-read it, thanks. An excellent
> "response" to Chase's less than flattering view of Hawthorne's
> Romance, and of Hawthorne and Romance generally. Although Chase claims
> his study is descriptive, he begins with a contrast (American Romance
> vs. the novel and the British novel) and provides all manner of
> critical assessments, common a the time---Henry James is the Greatest
> ... Wuthering Heights is just Sport ...and so on.  But, Chase also
> celebrates the Tradition that Pynchon writes in and, and this is very
> important because so much of the groping in the night where spotted
> cows and dappled dogs are shagging ...the autobiographical readings
> and the mis-readings of the Romantic characterizations and such, can
> do with a bit of grounding in the tradition here represented.
>
> That said, as a dappled dude of freckled face
> and orange Afro super saturated with rain
> I salute all the brothas who dropped pebbles in the toilet bowl
> and luv a blemish on a Brazilian lady, a little mole,
> a beauty mark that marks the spot and makes her hot hot hot.
>
> Turn the leaf now, Miles Coverdale.
>
>
> GLORY be to God for dappled things—
>  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
>    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
> Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
>  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
>    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
>
> All things counter, original, spare, strange;
>  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
>    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
> He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
>                  Praise him.
>
>
> Margaret, are you grieving
> Over Goldengrove unleaving?
> Leaves, like the things of man, you
> With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
> Ah! as the heart grows older
> It will come to such sights colder
> By & by, nor spare a sigh
> Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
> And yet you wíll weep & know why.
> Now no matter, child, the name:
> Sorrow's springs are the same.
> Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
> What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
> It is the blight man was born for,
> It is Margaret you mourn for.
>
>