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

[Robin Landseadel]

And I like that AtD anarchy/strangeness thing, so there you are.  
Characters in AtD are fleshed out or filleted according to the needs  
of their particular plotline—some characters are rounder than they  
appear in the mirror, others are just stick figures and no more than  
stick figures.

Of all of Pynchon's characters Oedipa has held a steady fascination  
for me. Perhaps it is because of her constant presence in the book,  
perhaps it is due to her being nearly a cipher and at the same time  
being a very sympathetic cipher—the crossroads of faith she stands on  
stands for all of us stuck in this world after religious certainty has  
left the station.

On May 15, 2009, at 8:40 AM, rich wrote:

> 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
>>