an opinion on TRP and HJ

[Dave Monroe]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 8:51 AM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> For this, I suggest, that Thomas Pynchon is one of the major writers in English who has been among the least influenced by Henry James---except that, yes, he too, wants every line to be interesting and every book to be called a work of art.
>
> Mr. 2 Cent

Au contraire, mon frere?  From Henry James, "Preface," The Princess
Casamassima (NYk: Penguin, 1987 [1886]), pp. 33-48:

"The simplest account of the origin of The Princess Casamassima is, I
think, that this fiction proceeded quite directly, during the first
year of a long residence in London, from the habit and the interest of
walking the streets....  One walked of course with one's eyes greatly
open, and I hasten to declare that such a practice, carried on for a
long time and over a considerable space, positively provokes, all
round, a mystic solicitation, the urgent appeal, on the part of
everything, to be interpreted ....  and to a mind curious, before the
human scene, of meanings and revelations the great grey Babylon easily
becomes, on its face, a garden bristling with an immense illustrative
flora." (p. 33)

"But what would the effect of the other way, of having so many
precious things perpetually in one's eyes, yet of missing them all for
any closer knowledge, and of the confinement of closer knowledge
entirely to matters with which a connexion, however intimate, couldn't
possibly pass for a privilege?" (p. 35)

"It seems probable that if we were never bewildered there would never
be a story to tell about us ....  Therefore it is that the wary reader
for the most part warns the novelist against making his character too
interpretive of the muddle of fate, or in other words too divinely,
too priggishly clever.  'Give us plenty of bewilderment,' this monitor
seems to say, 'so long a there is plenty of slashing out in the
bewilderment too.  But don't, we beseech you, give us too much
intelligence; for intelligence--well, endangers ....  It opens up too
many considerations, possibilities, issues ...." (p. 37)

"The whole thing thus comes to depend on the quality of bewilderment
characteristic of one's creature, the quality involved in the given
case or supplied by one's data...." (p. 39)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114339

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0107&msg=57554

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=59073

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0111&msg=62834

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0904&msg=134253

"... if only she'd looked."  (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 178)