Prising some Character and Emotion out of Pynchon's Books

Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Fri Jul 24 23:22:22 CDT 2009


Emotions and Characters in Pynchon
a personal rumination

part 1: first principles

My first inclination is to say that I don't find critical distinctions
to be very helpful.
Distinctions between flat or rounded characters, pondering whether a
book is modern or postmodern,
whether it belongs to a particular school, or what psychological or
political theory it's an example of,
seem more like distractions than enhancements to enjoyment or
understanding of a particular text.

But that's churlish!
Actually, I'm often happy to utilize terms from criticism; I'm not
oversensitive nor do I demand everybody
like the same things I do;
I do enjoy comparisons between authors; and I do sometimes use fiction
as a springboard to "deep thoughts" about
man and God and law (as Bob Dylan sang.)

If I continue typing here, I will be stating my critical principles
- or proceeding from them without actually stating them, which puts me
in risk of future discomfort,

that uncomfortable moment of recognition of what I've actually been
cooking up ("Gaahh!  Kreplach!!!)

So, in the words of Austin Powers, "...I do have a few thoughts..."
Fortunately they are brief.

Premise: reading is a useful pursuit for gaining information.

Fiction has two obviously helpful faces. First, it's good practice for reading.

But it's also a test-bed for thinking.  Specifically, it is a
narrative that ISN'T REAL.

Many of the helpfulnesses of fiction in developing thought-power apply
equally to non-fiction.
for example:
assimilating descriptions can help a person notice details in real life;
following sequences of events develops a sense of time, how the future
proceeds from the present, how the past still exists at least a bit in
memory;
the practice of responding emotionally and imaginatively to words
potentially leads to more intelligent conversations;
the wealth of available lit - its diversity, the impossibility of
reading it all, the delights and surprises waiting - is a ready
optimistic analogue for Life itself.
Histories, technical writing, novels, newspapers, cereal boxes...  I
take a rather Catholic view: it's all good.  Hooked on Books!
However, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
Something like Original Sin applies:
no writing, no matter how good, can be as real as Real Life.  Or maybe
this is more Goedelian, (or Crowleyian): no fictional
system can completely encompass the real, because the Real includes
its description ("The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs")

Fiction takes full advantage of the incomplete power of discourse,
while appearing to ignore it.
It sheds light over a new range of relationships between discourse and life.
That's the kind of statement that somebody could follow with proof,
information, and examples.
but that would be philosophy. Bad enough to admit to criticism...

Enough for my purposes is to state that an author has a lot of choices
in writing non-fiction,
and even more when writing fiction.  How they use that flexibility is
really something to see!
(speaking as a fan, not just of Pynchon, but of all authors)

A brief reference to the many purposes this flexibility allows fiction to serve,
such as therapy, wish-fulfillment, horizon-broadening, rabble-rousing,
social criticism,
experimentation, the development of ethics and so forth, but also home
improvement (is a home without
bookshelves really a home?  It's kind of like having a craftsperson
in, when you open a novel and start to read.)
is plenty.

What I really like is stories.  Long ago at some ur-campfire, someone
got a wild gleam and
began to play fast and loose with the facts. Somehow there occurred a
shared understanding that while
this person was departing from actuality, it was still worth listening
to as a Thing in Itself.

While some of the intimacy of the campfire setting is missing from
reading a novel, I would suggest
that the more you read, the more of that stuff you can impute.
Although the world has been both
expanded and contracted by technology and population growth, when I
read the world becomes a context
for the story.  It's the place where I'm reading...I feel at one with
those around the campfire...

How this bears on character and emotion in Pynchon is that, beyond a
certain point,
a reader with sophistication and fluency is not naively prone to
sympathies with "characters",
but the writer still wants to evoke emotions (good for sales)
so that techniques such as indirection and the element of surprise
(and a fanatical devotion to the Pope)
have evolved.
Oops, false start.  Later if ever for a discussion of technique - for,
after all, that is theoretical, critical, philosophical and is tending
to pull the discussion into the factual...not where I want to be....

How this bears on my reaction to character and emotion as expressed in
Pynchon's books?
...is that, of all the writers I know of, he interferes the least with
the type of "reading as an event"
that I enjoy the most.

I want to take one more step beyond theory.  Sure, the primary
keystone, or capstone, or philosopher's
stone, or foundation stone of my critical edifice is solidarity with
storytellers and listeners thru time.  But I don't have the chops
to expound on that and create any degree of satisfaction.

Maybe someday.  And some other time for elaborating on the enticing
idea "emotional relationships with particular words" as a basis for
gauging fiction.

What I want to do today, this being Friday (and payday) is admit that
I plan to write briefly about some of the
moments, characters (a-and, yes, words) that I find emotionally
satisfying or affecting in Mr Pynchon's work so far,
the reliability of such satisfaction being the reason I've chosen his
contracting services for bookshelf-filling over the years.





-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass



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