Rush to Judgement . . . HJ "The Art of Fiction" Authors must be Free to Fall

[Richard Romeo]

Nicely put. Not sure I'll need to read Vineland or even lot 49 again.  
Suspect IV will be same

Sent from my iPod

On Jul 19, 2009, at 9:32 AM, Campbel Morgan <campbelmorgan at gmail.com>  
wrote:

>
> I'm not one to complan about missing Fanboys, even when they confuse  
> an already confused prose style such as the one Mr. Pynchon employs  
> with hysterical sentences that often add shopping lists to laundrey  
> lists to FAQs and how-do-you-dos I'm just getting my two sentences  
> in before I'm introduced as yet another character thickening the  
> stew or is it the pot? But, and I must admit this first, while I  
> applaud the freedom of fiction, I can not abide a tale that taxes me  
> and disappoints me as well. This is, for starters, my problem with  
> Mr. Pynchon's California stories. They remind me of the old pun:
> "Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of  
> sports...the thrill of victory...and the agony of [the feet] (cue,  
> not the skier falling off the ramp but the barefoot surfer dude high  
> stepping across a boiling blacktop parking lot as blisters bubble  
> beneath the balls of his tender toes)...the human drama of athletic  
> competition...THIS is 'ABC's Wide World of Sports'!!!"
>
> The agony of Pynchon's prose is put up with when we span the globe,  
> but when we're stuck inside a pothead's paradise in a Pasadena  
> parking lot, even after a quick trip to Japan or Hawaii, it is a  
> sort of pain up with which I will not put.
>
>
> from James's essay, "The Art of Fiction"
> [We seems to err]  in attempting to say so definitely beforehand  
> what sort of an affair the good novel will be. To indicate the  
> danger of such an error as that has been the purpose of these few  
> pages; to suggest that certain traditions on the subject, applied a  
> priori, have already had much to answer for, and that the good  
> health of an art which undertakes so immediately to reproduce life  
> must demand that it be perfectly free. It lives upon exercise, and  
> the very meaning of exercise is freedom. The only obligation to  
> which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the  
> accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. That  
> general responsibility rests upon it, but it is the only one I can  
> think of. The ways in which it is at liberty to accomplish this  
> result (of interesting us) strike me as innumerable and such as can  
> only suffer from being marked out, or fenced in, by prescription.  
> They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are  
> successful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different  
> from others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal  
> impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value,  
> which is greater or less according to the intensity of the  
> impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no  
> value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a  
> line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled  
> out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very  
> thing that we are most curious about. The form, it seems to me, is  
> to be appreciated after the fact; then the author's choice has been  
> made, his standard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and  
> directions and compare tones. Then, in a word, we can enjoy one of  
> the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate quality, we can  
> apply the test of execution. The execution belongs to the author  
> alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by  
> that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and  
> responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he  
> may attempt as an executant--no limit to his possible experiments,  
> efforts, discoveries, successes. Here it is especially that he  
> works, step by step, like his brother of the brush, of whom we may  
> always say that he has painted his picture in a manner best known to  
> himself. His manner is his secret, not necessarily a deliberate one.  
> He cannot disclose it, as a general thing, if he would; he would be  
> at a loss to teach it to others. I say this with a due recollection  
> of having insisted on the community of method of the artist who  
> paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel. The painter is  
> able to teach the rudiments of his practice, and it is possible,  
> from the study of good work (granted the aptitude), both to learn  
> how to paint and to learn how to write. Yet it remains true, without  
> injury to the rapprochement, that the literary artist would be  
> obliged to say to his pupil much more than the other, "Ah, well, you  
> must do it as you can!" It is a question of degree, a matter of  
> delicacy. If there are exact sciences there are also exact arts, and  
> the grammar of painting is so much more definite that it makes the  
> difference.
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