afterthought per Ray and Richard

[Mark Kohut]

I have disagreed before and will again. 

The values that I sometimes say I find in TRPs work are either there, I think, or not.....that I can state them banally---as anyone can about certain values in many great artists does not mean that his way of
embodying them, placing them, is banal.....

On the contrary, it shows his genius. Human values "might" be always the same but how the artist illumines them is NOT. 

I have just read an Austen novel, not the first.  Austen, a genius, say I and many before and better'n me,  some of whose human "values" in her fiction can easily be expressed as simply, banally, as can the values of other geniuses of fiction. "Common life of common people" is one that surfaces just like that in Northanger Abbey.

Pick another writer. Express their revealed values....maybe as banal as I do, but maybe better....BUT, not the art in itself. 

Re Pynchon: Had I world enough and time I would remake the case that Pynchon is fictionally against imaginary numbers in AtD, in my controbversial opinion.....akin to the way Samuel Johnson was against 'fantasy' but with a full deep vision of the origins of the modern scientific worldview. 

See my post on 'touch' in the Penny-Doc scene....simple, banal value YET subtly placed and echoing throughout much of TRPs work. So, I believe I have seen and pointed out anyway. 




--- On Mon, 11/30/09, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: afterthought per Ray and Richard
> To: "Ray Easton" <kraimie at kraimie.net>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, November 30, 2009, 10:10 AM
> To say that Pynchon is for or against
> just about anything is a
> simpleton's mistake.  If Pynchon were that banal we
> wouldn't be here.
> 
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>
> wrote:
> > To be either for or against imaginary numbers, or
> quaternions to stick to the text, is a category mistake.
> 

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