Prising some Character and Emotion out of Pynchon's Books

[Michael Bailey]

Emotions and Characters in Pynchon
a personal rumination

Part 3: what am I going to mean by character and emotion?

a) Character
 i) Characters
Keeping it simple: a character is an impression created in the mind by
verbiage referring to a name within a story.
It's easiest to concentrate on human characters.  Other efficacious
entities can be imputed, especially in Pynchon ("They" but also
deities, certainly Angels, personifications of History, monsters,
inanimate objects (eg, in V. afoul of which Benny Profane runs)) but,
I'm sticking to my story-around-the-campfire motif.  Who's invited?
People, and dogs of course.

What is the "individual-unit-of-story-reception"?  A living person.
What is the corresponding entity within the story to which a person
responds?  A character.

So these other entities - though efficacious - though important - are
just not going to be characters in my scheme.  I might let a few
ghosts in, though...

 ii) Character
Character, as in the phrase, "builds character", is what the
perception and consideration of characters tends to.  The
contemplation of characters in a story bolsters the habit in living
persons of considering the things that constitute "character": values
and choices and attributes.


b) Emotion

We all know what emotion is, in general.
In fiction, I want to call it how you feel about what the characters
do. (And, I guess, what they
are - this comes into play in Pynchon a lot, I feel.)
Admiration (or otherwise) of the prose, of the ideas, of the social criticism,
of the structure, of the scenery - any of these is helpful, but the only
emotion that will carry a story for me is feeling for the characters.

This may be a pedestrian stance, I don't know.  But it's the reward or whatever
that makes it worthwhile to appreciate the rest of it.