Ch 6 of V-2 Eeeeeeraaaaah, wutsupdoc?

[alice wellintown]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Arguing over Pynchon's dialog is fun if you like brilliant reparte like "you
> don't know shit... maybe you should sut up"  and "I really would like for
> you to just go away",
>  I too might be inclined to sut up , once revealed as the literary
> mountebank I truly am, but I'm wondering if anyone was planning to risk a
> few remarks on ch 6.

Well, we had a schedule and you all elected to insert this little rest
or whatever. Robin doesn't like V.. so he's not gonna give it an
honest read or say anything good about it. That's too bad. Itz like
he's got this, gotta get that terri alice back for calling IV crap
revenge thing going in a passive digestive shit or get off the pot
gear. can't be helped. best to ignore it.

so, yeah, like say something joeseph, this feels like the beginning of
grass's dog years or that old chip and dale--no you bend over, please,
oh no I couldn't bend over first.



To weigh in on the controversy I think Pynchon's ear
> has gotten rather good ( In ways Robin illumintes well)and I think V is
>  weaker than later writing in several ways, including dialog.

What controversy? This is puddysillystring. If Pynchon is trying to
become the greatest writer of dialogue he's not succeeding. Of course
V. is weaker, in a million ways,  than M&D and VL etc. This is
obvious. God this is dumb.

But I think
> this is a powerful first novel with  an unusual and perhaps unprecedented
> structure;

Say anything about this idea and I'll kiss you. what's unusual and
perhaps unprecedented about its structure? what is the structure?


it also has a largeness of vision carried by some beautifully
> written passages and a quirky humor that signals a unique voice.

Right. it does.  Mondaugan's Story is quite moving and sublime. The
quirky humor of Mr. P grates on me after a while, but not so much in
V. because P is so young and the show-off parody and ju-vee bathroom
and college stuff, the, "I read Dante and Hemingway and Sartre and I
can make fun of Rand and the make it literate name drop is expected,
but late P humor of this sort is like TV sit com and infomercial or
NYC Jewish comedy---loud with pumped in can laughter loud and
hysterical over nothing, like a Homer Doh loud enough to make one
think P has a bad ear. But it's the Tube. Pynchon writes parody of the
Tube and reading it can make a funnybone feel like its being crushed
in a vice.



 I sense we
> are failing as a critical body to consider the ways Pynchon in V is marking
> out his own territory and  perhaps even reshaping the possibilities of
> fiction.

Are you kidding me? Shoot man, all I've done is show how, as laura put
it, the author was born out of Henry Adams's Education and other stuff
he rad and copied and how his work is new chapter in american romance.
and more. you listening to too much white noise, dude.


Accustomed to a more fluent and  dramatically engaging writer we
> are failing to see the formal daring-do of the Pynchon who wrote V. I think
> part of that disengagement  is the failure of the Benny Profane story. He
> just keeps insistently yo yoing , which, in a second read  begins to feel
> like doing nothing( interestng that  one Pynchon's rare essays is about
> sloth). Still, even Benny becomes  a door into some interesting terrain, and
> subterrain.

Why bother treating Benny like the protagonist? That's where a lot of
P readers get screwed up. Follow Paoloa and Stencil. Benny is just one
of the more important pigs, not the quest figure, Stencil is. Benny is
also the buddy pairing, like Q in M-D, but its Ishmael who is the
quest figure in the comic and romantic moby-dick, while ahab is the
tragic hero. Q is cool and all, but itz ishmael you have to follow.
like prairie in VL, not Zoyd.


>
> I think I will read ch 6  of V  tonight after I  finish this still rather
> lackluster Lethem  novel.  He brought in a 3 legged dog to offer a
> semi-salvific change to the only character of real interest , and it kinda
> worked for awhile, but now looks like no more than  the lead-in to a maudlin
> death scene. I don't think there is any saving of this  3 character dog.
>
>
>