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

[Henry Musikar]

Deconstruction, where is thy sting?  And Rich, I beg to differ.  I love OBA's sentences and paragraphs, but without the overarching themes that provide background and system, I'd look elsewhere.  As far as I'm concerned, P's prose can, at times, get in the way of initial readings, and for many preclude subsequent, closer readings.  If I just wanted well-turned sentences or poetry, I'd look elsewhere.

There but for themes and memes go many a writer of pretty prose.

Henry Mu
Sr. IT Consultant
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Laura

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 romeo
>
>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