Prising some Character and Emotion out of Pynchon's Books

[Dave Monroe]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:22 PM, Michael
Bailey<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Emotions and Characters in Pynchon
> a personal rumination

>From Deborah L. Madsen, "Pynchon's Quest Narratives and the Tradition
of American Romance," Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of
Lot 49 and Other Works , ed. Thomas H, Schaub (NY: MLA, 2008), pp.
25-30:

   "Students who have never studied American literature as a coherent
body of knowledge evaluate Pynchon's achievement in terms of their
familiarity with the canon of British literature.  Consequently, their
perception of what constitutes a novel in English is shaped by the
classic nineteenth-century British novelists ....  Thus, these
students anticipate that Pynchon's language will conform loosely to
E.M. Forster's prescription for 'round' or 'flat' characterization and
who will inhabit fictonal settings recognizably related to the world
....
   "Given these assumptions, students encounter difficulties with
Pynchon's deployment of the quest structure, his use of language and
symbolism, his types of characters, and their settings.  Richard
Chase, in his classic study, The American Novel and Its Tradition
(1957), observes that differences such as these mark American as
opposed to English novelistic conventions.... Chase identifies what he
calls the American 'romance-novel' ....
   "Chase stresses the importance of a shift in the attitude toward
characterization: from the novelistic emphasis on comprehensive
characterization to the romancer's interest in action and plot at the
expense of detailed character portrayal.  'Character itself,' he
writes, 'becomes ... somewhat abstract and ideal, so much so in some
romances that it seems merely a function of plot' (13) [ellipsis in
text].'  ..." (p. 25)

"When a romance is read as a novel, inevitably the romancer's attempt
to dramatize the hidden truths of the human condition becomes but a
weak 'paint and pasteboard' representation of social reality....  Like
Hawthorne, Pynchon creates characters to represent moral ideas, just
as he uses social history ... as idea rather than as event." (p. 26)

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