Pynchon on his characters

[John Bailey]

"He doesn't really do physical characteristics for their own sake"

I kinda see substituting physical description for "character" as a
form of fetishisation; turning characters into objects, rather than
subjects. Which has been a problematic idea since V. at least. It's
what V. attempts to do to herself - become pure object.

Maybe photography has a similar effect...

Pynchon doesn't create a verisimilitudinous world by piling up
physical descriptions of characters, their dress, their hair etc. I
think he only reveals Zoyd's beard late in VL, for instance - I could
be wrong. And Oed's appearance is really left to the reader. Mason &
Dixon are given a bit more shrift, but I see that as a way of setting
them up as Abbott & Costello types; a familiar relationship rather
than independent physicalities for their own sake.

But there are plenty of sympathetic fellas observing their protuding
bellies throughout Pynchon's writing, which I've always found funny
since by all accounts he's hardly a portly type.


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> Seconded. I've always liked Tony Tanner's take on this issue. In an essay
> on DeLillo's Underworld he criticizes DeLillo's poor characterization and
> contrasts it with Pynchon's:
>
> "[I]n Underworld, the many voices start to seem just part of one, tonally
> invariant, American Voice. There are hundreds of names in the book, but
> I would be prepared to bet that [...] none will be remembered six months
> after reading the novel. As, I find, for instance, are Pynchon's Stencil
> and Benny Profane; Oedipa Maas; Tyrone Slothrop and Roger Mexico; and - I
> predict - Mason & Dixon. It is not a question of anything so old-fashioned
> as 'well-rounded characters'; rather I'm thinking of memorably diffentiated
> consciousnesses."
>
> "Memorably differentiated consciousnesses".... That seems to me a very fitting
> description of Pynchon's characters. And on a personal note, no character in
> all of literature is as 'alive' to me as Slothrop, even at his most cartoonish.
>
>
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