For Joseph (from Group W Bench & the Romantics); why Alice closed the dump on Thanksgving and other Komspiracies from the Left

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 30, 2010, at 7:46 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> From Deborah L. Madsen, "Pynchon's Quest Narratives and the Tradition
> of American Romance," Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of
> Lot 49 and Other Works , ed. Thomas H, Schaub (NY: MLA, 2008), pp.
> 25-30:
>
>   "Students who have never studied American literature as a coherent
> body of knowledge evaluate Pynchon's achievement in terms of their
> familiarity with the canon of British literature.  Consequently, their
> perception of what constitutes a novel in English is shaped by the
> classic nineteenth-century British novelists ....  Thus, these
> students anticipate that Pynchon's language will conform loosely to
> E.M. Forster's prescription for 'round' or 'flat' characterization and
> who will inhabit fictonal settings recognizably related to the world
> ....  The structure of the narrative, they expect, will be based on
> the interaction of characters and the development of relationships
> among them that represent significant aspects of their culture and
> society.

Which is also true of Menippean Satire. One of the central differences  
between the American Romance tradition as espoused by Chase and  
Menippean Satire as espoused by most everybody is that the Menippean  
Satire is a bit more like a variety show with songs and dances, the  
Romance tends to be more serious.

>   "Given these assumptions, students encounter difficulties with
> Pynchon's deployment of the quest structure, his use of language and
> symbolism, his types of characters, and their settings.  Richard
> Chase, in his classic study, The American Novel and Its Tradition
> (1957), observes that differences such as these mark American as
> opposed to English novelistic conventions.... Chase identifies what he
> calls the American 'romance-novel,' a generic classification that
> accounts for the distinctive features of the narratives that form much
> of the American literary canon: works by James Fenimore Cooper,
> Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and ... Thomas Pynchon.
>   "Chase stresses the importance of a shift in the attitude toward
> characterization: from the novelistic emphasis on comprehensive
> characterization to the romancer's interest in action and plot at the
> expense of detailed character portrayal.  'Character itself,' he
> writes, 'becomes ... somewhat abstract and ideal, so much so in some
> romances that it seems merely a function of plot' (13) [ellipsis in
> text].'  ..." (p. 25)

And I see these elements in Pynchon's writing. At The same time, I'd  
argue that there was always a revision history element in Pynchon's  
take on things, where tales of the fall of the House of Pynchon were  
carefully folded into the storyline of just about everything he's  
written. I'd argue that his adaptation of the Longfellow / Meville  
American Lit. Trad. has a lot to do with good ole Judge Pynchon and  
his successful lawsuit. As Pynchon's surveyor Father laid a grid on  
the landscape of Long Island, so did the younger Pynchon map the lives  
of his ancestors throughout New England and environs.

>  "The subject matter of the quest romance is abstract moral truth
> ... as opposed to more particular sociological kinds of truth that
> arise from the ordinary or probable experiences in the novel.  As a
> consequence, the romance is set not in the recognizable world of real
> life but in some neutral space where the marvelous and the ordinary,
> the imaginary events and actual locations may meet.  The laws of
> possibility are suspended ... so that the truths of human experience
> may be acted out in the narrative.... the highly stylized, fictional
> world of the romance: all is symbolic, but the symbolic meetings are
> not simple and obvious; rather, they are as ambiguous as the human
> situations being represented." (p. 26)

Again, this all also applies to the Menippean Satire except that  
simple and obvious part. While Pynchon displays his fair share of  
ambiguously human situations, he has more than his fair share of   
simple and obvious ones as well. More Carnival / less tragedy.

> "When a romance is read as a novel, inevitably the romancer's attempt
> to dramatize the hidden truths of the human condition becomes but a
> weak 'paint and pasteboard' representation of social reality....  Like
> Hawthorne, Pynchon creates characters to represent moral ideas, just
> as he uses social history ... as idea rather than as event." (ibid.)
>
> "Indeed, several of the features that supposedly define Lot 49 and
> other Pynchon works as postmodern are actually characteristics of the
> American quest romance: the self-conscious foregrounding of narrative,
> the infinite deferral of meaning, the self-reflexive concern with
> reading and textuality...." (p. 30)
>
> see  ya, Josesph...not that I expect you to understand any of this
> either, but I'm sure Robin will exaplin it all tpo ya.

But when the author is consciously working at the sort of discordant  
harmonies / timbres of a Spike Jones revisionist orchestration of a  
tin-pan alley hit--that's Postmodernism.