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

[Mark Kohut]

Dear alice,

You know what they say about 'ASSumptions"?.....that you assume I haven't read him I'll laugh off, because, I agree with you about his (limited) greatness and (some of ) his weaknessnesses. 

There are more reading weaknesses than you say, imho. 

I, for one, am so bored with this plist spending so much time on Wood and I wish I hadn't alluded to him again. But it was just an allusion to see if some of the better pynchon readers on this plist, who DID find the humor in THIS book NOT the same as in (most of) his other books would make their cases. THAT I want to hear more of, from Laura, Rich, you and Morris (if he thinks along the same lines, can't remember)...I only found a joke or two groanworthy, because that's me, but I found the line-by-line writing joyously witty, in general. In a resonantly minor work of genre homage.

Mark

--- On Mon, 11/30/09, 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: Monday, November 30, 2009, 10:41 AM
> Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > That what TRP does with his characters is 
> "juvenile vaudeville" is what Wood sez.
> 
> He says a lot more than this, but you will need to read his
> books to
> critique them. I've read all but his novel attempt and I
> say there is
> a reason why he is the most celebrated young critic around:
> he is
> great.  That said, I agree that he has trouble with
> what Weisenburger
> aptly names the "Fables of Subversion." He has a blind
> spot, often
> ridiculed as conservative or stodgy rigidity (hew
> admiration for James
> & Co.) or even stiff upper lip British elitism, but I
> would define it
> as a misreading of American satire and romance, including
> and most
> glaringly of those American fabulists he claims have
> inherited
> Melville's broken estate.
> 
> >
> > 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.
> 
> His critique, that P does not give the reader proper
> lessons in how we
> are to read his texts and specifically his characters is
> proven on
> this list daily.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Yet the humor of the California trilogy is clearly not the
> profound
> and subversive humor of the big romances. Wood complains
> that the big
> books point to themselves and are hysterical. He is right.
> But this is
> no reason to complain. Wood doesn't like fiction that
> denies
> character, for to deny character is to deny the novel.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Why should he care? He asks about her vibe, but that's all.
> He moves
> along. She seems a fixture. The more important question is,
> why does P
> make us not care or undermine our interest in this
> character?
>