Chap 16, The Price of Wisdom is above Ruby's...

[Mark Kohut]

That what TRP does with his characters is  "juvenile vaudeville" is what Wood sez. 

What Wood cannot see is the meaning of humor as anarchic joy, juvenile and otherwise, in his fiction. He cannot allow himself the time/trouble to feel more deeply what meaning TRP gives it in his work. 

The man complained to Helen Vendler about how much time babies/kids took
to care for. She told him raising them 'would make him a better reader'. 
Time might tell, but I think he has internalized realistic earnestness overmuch in his Causabon-like quest. He may go down in history as Saintsbury did, voracious reader who missed so many of the great writers of his time.   

We could predict that from Sterne, through Swift, through Rabelais thru Dickens and the Marx Brothers, Wood would find the humor 'juvenile vaudeville'. Humor mostly is. I suggest the novelistic point is whether it IS witty and who is scored satirically and well.

Re below:
Doc does care. And your simple dissing while glossing the characters shows 
more yet to talk about, minor, or richer or failed novel that IV is being judged. 



--- On Sun, 11/29/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Chap 16, The Price of Wisdom is above Ruby's...
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009, 11:16 PM
> Corny allusions are an element of P's
> juvenile style. We either enjoy
> this element of his style or we put up with it. Wood's
> complaint,
> however, is not limited to P's juvenile style of writing,
> but extends
> to his juvenile characters and how P fails to provide a
> reason why
> readers should care about them. Indeed, P deliberately
> pulls, not only
> the rug out from under the reader's conventional
> expectations about
> characters, but also the floor or ground. Shasta is back?
> And? She is
> back. Does Larry care? Does anyone? Should the reader? What
> about the
> postcard? What about it? Who cares? Denis, Bigfoot, Fritz,
> other "less
> devloped" characters expect that Larry will care; they tell
> him that
> Shasta is back in town. These dialogues about Shasta's
> return place
> emphasis on Larry's reaction, but his reaction is subdued.
> He doesn't
> seem to care. He runs out and into Bigfoot and goes to see
> Penny. Of
> course, Shasta suggested he go see Penny the last time she
> returned
> from wherever (CH. 1). And he did. We go along. P tosses in
> a few more
> jokes and set-pieces and sex. Shasta? Who cares? That Penny
> is head
> down in Larry's penis. Juvenile? You could say that.
> 
> 
> >
> > I like the joke that the burgers killed so many mice
> and roaches
> > there were no health-code violations. Others besides
> james wood
> > find it juvenile?
> >
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