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

[rich]

Pynchon is enjoyable at the level of the sentence, that beautiful
(let's not forget weird either) prose--all the other stuff
(characterization, abstract theme, etc.) is gravy, really

I think of them all, M&D suffers the least from that downfall becuase
he was constrained somewhat by the real lives of Mason and Dixon--the
book is about them and is not overshadowed by that stupid fucking line
(unlike say the Rocket--overshadowed--ha!)

AtD is as someone said a strange book--the book is anarchy

On 5/15/09, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree w/ Malignd.
>
> Pynchon novels are the embodiment of what he calls "wrong" in SL
> intro, no matter how much he protests:  "begin with a  theme, symbol
> or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and
> events to conform to it."
>
> This is exactly what he does in all his novels, GR being his finest
> example.  His saving grace is that he can write amazingly beautiful
> prose.  His downfall is when he tries to stuff too many themes and
> examples into one novel, losing focus, AtD being the most egregious
> example.
>
> David Morris
>