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

[Ian Livingston]

> his tropes and tricks are for the purpose of the story.

Which is ...?

> They are tools used just to say what he hopes to say.

And again ...

Of course it is for him to know (mostly) and us to learn (partly).  Of
course he undersells himself.  Nothing wrong with that at all.  He
likes to be left alone to write, right?  And to live.  His life will
perhaps be more public after death creates an angel of him, but that
is unimportant for now.  We are the first generation to have the
privilege of reading his work.  Later generations will have even more
to say, I believe, about the nature of his plots and his -- shall I
say -- intrigues?  Meaning is always changing.  I do not believe it is
possible to reduce any work of art to a subset of ideas.  The work is
whole unto itself.  The great metaphorical depths we perceive are
there only because we see them.  Until we see them they are like
amoeba to Sophocles:  existent, but unperceivable, unknowable.  The
pond remains with all its life a pond, the story remains with all its
depth a story.  When we lose the thread of the plot is it some fault
of the artist's? of our own?  When we discover it is  that some genius
of the author's? of our own?  Art exists in a way both irreducible and
begging for reduction.  Of course we are supposed to see the whole and
all of the parts, as in the rest of life, maybe, but that is sometimes
a tall order.  I often don't get what's going on in TRP's work, but
what I do get is stunning in its depth and makes me want to learn
more.  Some medieval alchemist said, "One book opens another."  That
is certainly the case with any of OBA's books.

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 5:22 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ... it is certainly also true that we can take TRP at his word:
>
> Pynchon is night unto Mucho Maassive in this regard, he at any rate
> undersells himself, though one might suggest he does this as a
> distraction, a feint.  It's not entirely implausible that he
> discourages Hollander in that letter precisely becaues The Dude may
> have come all too close to the truth of the matter, in some way or
> another, though that speculation is entirely my own ...
>
>> his tropes and tricks are for the purpose of the story.
>
> Which is ...?
>
>> They are tools used just to say what he hopes to say.
>
> And again ...
>