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

[Ian Livingston]

What is any writer doing with the rest of his mind while (s)he is
writing?  Can anyone express anything without their cumulative
knowledge and experience coloring what they say?  History, memory,
fact -- are these other than corruptions of experience?  And what
about the reader?  Can we leave the reader out of the formula?  Of
course Pynchon says more than he intends.  That's the nature of the
Jungian shadow -- we know more Pynchon's shadow than he does.  Of
course that also implies you all know more about mine than I do, etc.
Greatness is not measured by intentions, but by its fruits.  Truly the
fruits of OBA's intentions are marvelous.  But it is certainly also
true that we can take TRP at his word:  his tropes and tricks are for
the purpose of the story.  They are not meant to impress anybody.
They are tools used just to say what he hopes to say.  N'est-ce pas?


On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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
>>>
>
>
>