an opinion on TRP and HJ

[Campbel Morgan]

Why the blind spot here? It's fairly obvious to any reader willing to
listen to a formalist argument that a reading of Pynchon's novels as
satire, Mennipean Satire  (Mendleson or Anatomy Frye) or Post-Beat &
Postmodern Satire (Weisenberger) or Encyclopeadic Picaresque or
whatever term ...lights our fires . . . but we knbow what is meant
...is solid and fruitful. But why insist that Pynchon is outside the
history of the American novel, including, of course, that great
American Mennipean Satirist, Melville? Why insist that Melville,
Hawthorne ..then James, then Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and so on
as described in the SL Intro. are not the works that influenced YBA?
It's so very clear that Pynchon is an American author, influenced by
the Americans; he writes American fiction. And why not? Henery Adams,
Henry James, T.S. Eliot. What have they in common? All born in
America. All write about the American conflict with the old European
world in collapse and how this Deline of the West will play out in
America. Pynchon, when he goes to Europe, as he does in his first
novel, and if course this is the brilliance of GR, he goes there to
say something about, to write a MS about America. In his last novel he
follws Blake's America into America.

Pugnax reads James. He also reads French novels, in French-->. Eugene'
Sue. He also brings a Venitian on board as a guest. That fellow canine
is describes as a "work of" Vitorre Capaccio. Now, HJ wrote about this
artist and the art of Venice, used it as a setting (HJ and
Shaklespeare is worth reading, see Tanner, Tony) in his travel
writings.   This dog, who likes to eat the best food on the best
plates money can buy, who reads French potboilers and socialist pulp,
and HJ, has something to tell us. Maybe, just maybe, it's that
America, the Modern centre of everything, including all the arts, is
the new Venice.


On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Henry James' "Art of Fiction" is so open-minded in wanting to allow all
> kinds of fiction into the "house of fiction"--his phrase.
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> As has been posted, some narrowed his openness prescriptively.
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> James himself, that deep, dense psychological realist, mostly wrote about
> writers of a similar kind in his own criticism, appreciating some who might be said to manifest more of a "sense of humor" than he did.
>
> But the comic tradition of savage satire, Menippean as one scholar of Pynchon finds it, comic satire from Rabelais, through always-angry Jonathon Swift, the unique Laurence Sterne for Tristram Shandy, let's add Dante shakily, very obliquely, you can scratch him if you'll breathe easier, since he is an Italian poet, but we know a great love of TRP's; from Fielding through the Dickens of James' time, is not a tradition about which James had much of anything to say. No piercing appreciation, as with Hawthorne, or creative informed understanding, it seems.
>
> Philip Roth, praised by being mentioned by OBA in the Slow Learner intro, say, started with Henry James as the prime model for his work. James' influence went deep inside him as a grad student at Chicago, which Chicago School (of criticism) is also mentioned by OBA in that SL intro BUT is contrasted to the Chicago literary crisis of OBA's time: "Chicago Review" "turning into the Beat-oriented Big Table Magazine".  With a segue into TRPs praise of "On the Road". An anti-Jamesian novel?
>
> Henry James' relentless talent, his dense psychological insight and his genius for character and deep American-English themes lead him to write not a few masterpieces, although "Princess Casmassima" might not be one of them. But that is for another list forum.
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> 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
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