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

[Mark Kohut]

I like Ms. Madsen's phrase "infinite deferral of meaning" although that is 
o'ersaid for pointmaking.....

More like a huge wave of multiple meaning....and, with TRP, some meanings in 
every stoned sentence



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, August 30, 2010 10:46:20 PM
Subject: For Joseph (from Group W Bench & the Romantics); why Alice closed the 
dump on Thanksgving and other Komspiracies from the Left

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.
  "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)

  "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)

"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.