Noir Classics

[Dave Monroe]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Morris<fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> How fortunate we are for your guidance.

Were you a professional asshole of some sort in a former life?  Bill
collector or somesuch?  Not because you're good at it, per se, but you
sure are persistent.  Tenacious, even.  Meanwhile,  even Pynchon's
short stories hardly hold up to to something like Forster's "flat" vs.
"round" distinction, or Gardner's "moral fiction," much less Wood's
How Fiction Shirks or whatever,  But they don't have to.  Pynchon
doesn't have to.  Nobody and the texts they wrote in on has to.    Adn
it seems to me that as often as not Pynchon is doing something really
other than else entirely.  Regardless of his (few, vague, semipublic,
apocryphal, even) statements to the contrary.  Seemingly inexplicable
presences seem Imbued with Significance nonetheless.  Without having
worked out just how, I'd suggest that, say, the relationships,
exchanges, what have you, between the various characters in the
various books are at LEAST as important a sthe characters
'themselves," that maybe even taht the relationships "have"--generate,
necessaitate, what have you--the charcaters more so than vice versa.
All those familial, sexual, what have you relationships.  Allegory.
Vs. plot, narrative, characterization, story ....