an opinion on TRP and HJ

[Mark Kohut]

I'll be difficult today and repeat myself with an attempted syllogism and argument from the text.

A writer, Pynchon, chooses every word, phrase he gets down, yes? 

With such as Pynchon, there are many, many 'seemingly offhand' remarks
that we can wonder why are they there? What did he 'mean' by saying it?.

As Doug M. says we all know it must mean something that Pugnax, a dog, is reading "Princess Casamassima". First, the whole scene could have been left out or, if it is just to characterize Pugnax, be a completely different book....Jules Verne,say. I agree with Doug and wrote in an earlier post
that I think TRP might have MEANT something subtly interesting when he also wrote
of Pugnax, "that he usually preferred lurid thrillers about his own species"...Another remark which could not exist in AtD and would not change it substantially........that line might be Pynchon sorta saying, "Princess Casamassima" is
escapist fiction(!), not James usual penetrating realism........PC is NOT lurid enough.....that James, genius, did NOT however GET the conditions that produced anarchists, and sided, perhaps, way too easily
with those who were NOT the exploited workers, the starving laborers, the victims of laissez-faire social Darwinism.......

I'm done now. Carry on.

--- 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)
>