Character (WAS: COL49 - Chap 2: San Narciso as a circuit board)
kelber at mindspring.com
kelber at mindspring.com
Fri May 15 11:23:13 CDT 2009
His books don't give the impression that he's started with a theme, but, rather that themes (sometimes too many) emerged along the way after the initial inspiration gave him a character or premise to start from. I still believe it's plausible that Varo's paintings were that inspiration for COL49 -- the emotions they produced guiding him towards subconscious themes which became more explicit as he wrote on.
Laura
-----Original Message-----
>From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>Sent: May 15, 2009 11:40 AM
>To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Character (WAS: COL49 - Chap 2: San Narciso as a circuit board)
>
>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
>>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list