HJ "The Art of Fiction"

[Mark Kohut]

Nope, I suggest......TRPs fiction is NOT, in essence, as HJ outlined and defined it, I say.......

As James showed so fully, a character's quip might not be the author's,
all that POV shit, so smart from HJ.

--- On Sun, 7/19/09, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: HJ "The Art of Fiction"
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, July 19, 2009, 10:31 PM
> Campbel Morgan wrote:
> > Again, the author, while he can't quite keep his
> political ideas off the
> > table all the time, has set out to write a perfect
> work of art and to
> > demonstrate his skills. His quip on HJ at the start of
> the adventure that
> > quickly goes North, or is it South?, over the rainbow
> anyway, is telling; he
> > is not HJ and has no reason to be, but is, while as
> far from the realist
> > fiction of HJ's day, an artist composing fiction as HJ
> outlined and defined
> > it: he practices the ART of fiction. He plays with
> Twain, TSI, he plays with
> > Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, then, as HJ does, the
> encounter of the
> > Americans and the old world and the sins of the world,
> then two California
> > briefs that play around political party talk and
> happenings in cultural
> > bursts, then a masterwork and another, now to the
> California again for an
> > easy rider. The voice, the style, so brilliant at
> times, as in AGTD, now
> > languishes and bleeds a screed from the end of the
> bar.
> 
> a) again, welcome to the list, good to see a fresh email
> header !
> b) what is it with Henry James, anyway?  Philip Roth
> quotes him a lot too!
> c) where is it written in stone that a novel shouldn't
> express political views?
> d) where in Pynchon can we be sure that we do really see
> the author
> expressing his own heartfelt beliefs, rather than putting
> views in the
> mouths of characters for them to be refracted and often
> refuted by
> other characters and plot developments?
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "No, not a political novel.  More a pathological
> novel.  A psychotic novel."
> - Margaret Drabble (_A Natural Curiosity_)
>