James Wood On Pynchon's Characters

[Dave Monroe]

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 2:52 AM, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n21/letters

[...]

> To me, it is not what an author does with *characters* that counts,
> any more than it is to do with what he does with *plots* or *themes*.
> Rather, it is what he does with *words* that matters. Many of teh
> people whose books Wood seems to like are several strata below Pynchon
> in terms of what they *can* do with words, imho.

That's one thing.  Not to mention a good point.  But, Pynchon's own
protests aside here, perhaps, of course, my question, at least (not to
mention, say, notoriously, here, Chas. Hollander's), is, what IS
Pynchon doing, beyond "telling a story," "writing a novel," whatever?
I'd suggest that perhaps that question comes particularly to the fore
precisely when asking ore conventional, more conventionally "literary"
questions yields confusion (at best?) ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0907&msg=137558

Pynchon is obviously a guy who Knows What He's Doing (a Lacanian
Subject Supposed-to-Know?  Hm ...).  So why is he doing what he's
doing?  I'm not  @ the moment going to venture any even tentative,
provisional answers to that here just yet, but ...

... but I am surprised (to some extent? or maybe not?) that we're
taking @ face value (at least some of) the truism that have been
thrown @ IV, and have apparently stuck, e.g., that it is "simply" a
hard(albeit not so much here)boiled detective novel.  Haven't they ALL
been, then?  Is not perhaps the history of "Western" literature, of
"Western" thought, a detective story?  Truth as something obscured to
outright hidden, even, appearances, surfaces as deceptive, misleading,
your mission, to dis/un/re/whatever/cover Reality, preferably via the
preferred means of philosophy/science/law/whatever, i.e., Reason,
Logic, what have you ...

> The LRB review of Inherent Vice, by Thomas Jones, on the other hand,
> is the best essay I have yet read on the book, the first piece of
> proper criticism. For Wood to take just that one line about reading IV
> replicating the experience of being stoned, is an utterly dishonest
> way to make an argument.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n17/thomas-jones/call-it-capitalism

> By the wa, I can't tell you how glad I am that Mr Jackson doesn't like
> 'Against the Day'.

Why so?