Vice, Henry James, Raymond Chandler, etc.

[Paul Mackin]

Robin, you're way too easily upset.

P.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 6:29 AM
Subject: Re: Vice, Henry James, Raymond Chandler, etc.


> On Jul 25, 2009, at 5:04 AM, Campbel Morgan wrote:
>
>> As Paul noted, it's quite a lot to tackle in this forum;
>> characterization is a huge & complex topic. That said, and while I do
>> recognize that many a P-List participant can not abide a critical
>> term, even a standard one like "realism" or fundamental, though
>> arguably no longer useful,  critical idea like flat character/round
>> character, and that the interest in, what is surely the most thrilling
>> series of events involving the BA of this Listserve, that is the epic
>> battles of the prodigious enfant terrible, James Wood and the old yet
>> terrible king of infantile and hysterical realism,
>
> I'm going to need some sort of chart here. Let me get this straight:  are 
> you saying that James Wood is the " the prodigious enfant  terrible" and 
> that Thomas Pynchon is " the old yet terrible king of  infantile and 
> hysterical realism?" Because if you are, then you're  simultaneously 
> putting out a crude insult and a specious parallelism.  I mean, what epic 
> battle? On one side is one of those lit-crit types  who's applying a rigid 
> template to a canonic author who got there by  breaking templates. And on 
> the other is an author whose stylistic  affiliations owe little, at this 
> juncture, to those models you so  clearly suffer from the sorts of 
> fan-boydum you accuse p-listers of.  Pynchon owes at least as much to 
> Chuck Jones cartoons, James Joyce's  internal dialogs, Raymond Chandler 
> plots and similes and Times of  London advertisements as he does to Henry 
> James and Henry Adams.  Again, applying a modernist template to a 
> postmodern author is flat  out stupid.
>
> Did you actually READ "Gravity's Rainbow?" Or are you just riffing off  of 
> James Wood's Cliff Notes to GR?
>
>
>> . . . is limited here,
>> although I'm still astounded by the resistance to a discussion of
>> literature on a listserve that purports to be an open discussion of
>> the most important author writing in English, certainly in America,
>> that is, if we measure importance with a critical yard stick.
>
> Do you always  measure "importance" with somebody else's critical 
> yardstick? And if so, if you were using your own critical yardstick 
> instead of someone else's— just say what 's on your mind by expressing 
> your own thoughts without the cover of Mr. Wood, choosing your own 
> examples, making illustrative examples from the texts themselves—then 
> what would you be saying?
>
>> In any
>> event, so it goes.
>>
>> This article sums it up better than I can so ...you can find it
>> online.
>
> Maybe, but if that's the case, then where's the links? I'm not saying 
> that providing links to online resources is absolutely required at the 
> P-list but it is pretty much de-rigueur. Kinda like taking off your  shoes 
> before entering a Japanese home.
>
>> Excellent points on HJ and how Pynchon "copies" HJ in AGTD.
>
> And about 150 other, vastly different, prose styles including various 
> emergent pulp fictions from the turn of the previous century,  children's 
> novels like "Tom Swift" and articles from the New York  Times, circa 1907.
>
>> Fascinating factoid: HJ was writing a novel about time travel when
>> time ran out on him.
>
> Too bad we don't have that book.
>
>> Well, I hear he's hanging with his Chum Santos
>> Dumont in a heavenly harbor just outside of Grace.
>
> Please be so kind as to cite the source of this mythoid.
>
>> PS I still find reading of American fiction, Wood is a Brit living in
>> the US, as evolving from Brithish novels (Fielding, Dickens) absurd.
>> While our declearation of literary independence was delayed, we did
>> win independence. And, while we also had the exchange authors HJ,
>> Eliot, the lost gen and so on, we can trace Pynchon through American
>> Literature. The argument, and it's not mine, it has been around since
>> GR was published, and I was just a little kid then, that GR is
>> indebted to Moby-Dick is solid. That M&D, not AGTD, is Pynchon's
>> Confidence Man is also in the academic literature.
>>
>> PPPPPSSSSS  Now I'm pissing, but the ironies in this battle between
>> Pynchon and Wood are wonderful; both are compassionate conservative
>> types
>
> Whoa, dude. Calling Pynchon a "compassionate conservative" makes the  bile 
> rise in my throat. The imbecile who came up with that deathless  Oxymoron 
> is given a devastating satirical portrait in Against the Day:
>
> They all lived in fear of the Governor, forever to and fro in
> Jeshimon and apt to arrive anywhere in town without warning.
> What impressed a first-time viewer was not any natural
> charisma, for he had none, but rather a keen sense of
> something wrong in his appearance, something pre-human in
> the face, the sloping forehead and clean-shaven upper lip,
> which for any reason, or none, would start back into a simian
> grin which was suppressed immediately, producing a kind of
> dangerous smirk that often lingered for hours, and which, when
> combined with his glistening stare, was enough to unnerve  the
> boldest of desperadoes. Though he believed that the power
> that God had allowed to find its way to him required a confident
> swagger, his gait was neither earned nor, despite years of
> practice, authentic, having progressed in fact little beyond an
> apelike trudge. The reason he styled himself Governor and not
> President or King was the matter of executive clemency. The
> absolute power of life and death enjoyed by a Governor within
> his territory had its appeal. He traveled always with his
> "clemency secretary," a cringing weasel named Flagg, whose
> job was to review each day's population of identified
> malefactors and point with his groomed little head at those to be
> summarily put to death, often by the Governor himself, though,
> being a notoriously bad shot, he preferred not to have a crowd
> around for that. "Clemency" was allowing some to wait a day or
> two before they were executed, the number of buzzards and
> amount of tower space being finite.
> AtD, 212
>
> Texas Executions:
> GW Bush Has Defined Himself, Unforgettably, As Shallow And
> Callous
> by Anthony Lewis
>
> BOSTON-There have been questions all along about the depth
> and seriousness of George W. Bush. They have been brought
> into sharp focus now by a surprising issue: the way the death
> penalty is administered in Texas. In his comments on that
> subject Governor Bush has defined himself, unforgettably, as
> shallow and callous. . .
>
> The rest of the article is at:
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/views/061700-102.htm
>
> My posting on the subject during our group read of Against the Day:
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0703&msg=116345&keywords=governor%20of%20jeshimon
>
>> who distrust nostalgia and religion, but are nearly reactionary
>> in their need to defy the gnostic machine of numbing dehumaization.
>
> Please explain what a "gnostic machine" is.