Pynchon on his characters

[Rob Jackson]

It's long been a bit of an urban myth that Pynchon's characters are  
cartoons or ciphers. He doesn't really do physical characteristics for  
their own sake (e.g., could Oedipa be African-American?) and while  
their names and taste in boudoir couture (Oedipa's clothing is a  
subject worth looking into ...) border on the fanciful, there are  
consistencies and intensities in the emotional lives of many of the  
central characters which are very authentic and expertly-orchestrated.

The term 'novel of ideas' is a lit crit term often used pejoratively.  
It refers to fiction in which conversation and intellectual discussion  
and debate predominate and where plot, characterisation,  
relationships, emotional conflicts and so forth are minimal or  
incidental (e.g., some of Aldous Huxley's novels).

Pynchon writes novels with lots of ideas in them, but he doesn't write  
"novels of ideas".

best regards


On 15/05/2009, at 5:00 PM, pynchon-l-digest wrote:

> "[...] 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 sce
> nes, fill in
> characters and so forth, and the less of it I have to do, the better  
> for
> me cause I'm lazy."