Noir Classics

[Dave Monroe]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 1:38 PM, David Morris<fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lew is an example of one of AtD's flaws:  It was filled with secondary
> characters who added little but distraction from whatever my have been the
> main point of this novel.
>
> GR had a cast of thousands, but most of the secondary characters existed for
> only a single, memorable event.  Those that had repeat performances fit into
> a larger cohesive web of meaning/message, and their contributions were
> usually in very dramatic interactions.
>
> It's hard to think of Lew, and many of the other AtD 2nd and 3rd level
> characters as contributing on such a level.

This is why I've long thought it's pointless to apply such strictures
of "good storytelling" or whatever here, no matter what Pynchon
himself might claim (I'm thinking the Responsorio ad Hollander).  I
tend to think all tehse characters/elements/events/what have you DO
have tehir specific, reasonable, worthwhile fuctions, they're just not
the ones we're generally told to expect, is all.  My instinct here is,
Those Pynchonian texts are highly allegorical, recall that
(apocryphal, yes, but I like it, too)  remark about anatomical
diagrams ...