Character (WAS: COL49 - Chap 2: San Narciso as a circuit board)

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Joseph Tracy:
 
> Isn't it just as possible that Pynchon is inherently skeptical about
> the very idea of "character", particularly the idea of character as
> a learning process leading to arrival at fulfilled maturity.[...]
> What is character anyway, and how much does it follow the internal 
> narrative paradigm of western literature? 
 
I would have to agree: This is how Pynchon writes in his novels. Yet it 
is interesting to compare his actual practice with his non-fiction reflections 
on character. When he disparages "Entropy" in his introduction to Slow Learner, 
for instance, he writes:
 
"The story is a fine example of a procedural error beginning writers
are always being cautioned against. It is simply wrong to begin with a 
theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force
characters and events to conform to it."
 
And this idea is echoed in a letter to Charles Hollander from 1981 which
was recently up for auction (it sold for 14,400 dollars!):
 
"[...] I don't write "novels of ideas."Plot and character come first, just
like with most other folk's stuff, and the heavy thotz and capitalized
references and shit are in there to advance action, set scenes, fill in
characters and so forth, and the less of it I have to do, the better for
me cause I'm lazy."
 
We also find the emphasis on character even earlier, in some of the blurbs
Pynchon wrote back in the 70s. In 1979 he praises Phyllis Gebauer's 'The
Pagan Blessing' for its "characters who are alive and engaging," in 1975 
he lauds M. F. Beal's 'Amazon One' for "tak[ing] you into the lives
of people you can care about and believe in," and in 1970 he sez that
Marge Piercy's 'Dance the Eagle to Sleep' has "the best set of characters
since Moby Dick or something."
 
So the idea of character surely means a lot to Pynchon, at least if we are
to take his non-fiction reflections at all seriously. It's not hard to see
some sort of internal struggle going on here: Pynchon desperately wanting 
to stay with his characters, but constantly being pulled in the direction of
"the heavy thotz and capitalized references and shit."
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