an opinion on TRP and HJ

[Mark Kohut]

Still stand by what I wrote, but I've been often wrong often before and often.

So it goes.

--- On Wed, 7/22/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: an opinion on TRP and HJ
> To: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 11:31 AM
> 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)
>