HJ "The Art of Fiction"

[Campbel Morgan]

On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Michael
Bailey<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:>

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?

a)HJ is hot right now. Why is that? Several reasons, including the
movies that have been produced from his works. In the critical world,
everyone quotes HJ because he is one of the most influential and
important American/English critics/novelists of the last 100 years or
so; the art of writing/reading fiction is the subject of so much of
what is being written about fiction by the critical industry;  and  of
course, this is owed, in part,  to the fact that this subject is an
important one in  modern and postmodern fiction. I quoted James
because I think an author must have the freedom to write as he or she
pleases. We can expect and we should welcome experiementation. If
Thomas Pynchon writes a parody of his own masterwork, Mason & Dixon,
we can complain that it's not what we wanted, we can critique its
prose style, its poor character development, its recycled and worn out
tropes and the like, but we shouldn't ruch to judge a work on the form
the author chooses. Let them choose; authors, like Angels and Adams
must be free to Fall. Also, there are critical essays on James's
influence in/on AGTD and the influence of American Pragmatism
generally on Pynchon. Thought it might ring a bell. Also, it seems
there is a debate about the irony and humor and satire of the works
and how the anarchists and the capitalists are treated in AGTD. It
seems rather obvious that the novel alludes to HJ, Conrad, Upton
Sinclair ...others on this subject and reading these others augments,
even if it doesn't end, the debate.

c) I thought it was "written in/on whatever it is that they write it
on/in up there" (Zappa). In other words, it's just yellow snow. Of
course novelists write about politics and express their political
views in their works. There is a fairly good argument that if one
doesn't write about politics/history, the Nobel is out of reach (see
Thomas Foster's How to Read Novels Like a Professor).

d) not easy to pin things down in modern and postmodern fiction, but
surely any sensitive reader can not fail to understand the heartfelt
beliefs of this author; progressive modernist pragmatist; not too
difficult to discover in his essays and so on. What readers feel in
their hearts as they read is another matter; a more important one by
far. That is, if they can explain what they feel/think.

Have a nice day,

Campbel