Where's the labor section?

[alice wellintown]

Moreover, a flat and static character (please excuse these terms, I
expect objections to them and will toss others in with long
definitions if need be...but forgive me and I will spare you the
circumlocution office and its forms) can do heavy lifting and leave an
impression on the reader. Mr. Wilson is Fitzgerald's Gatsby is such a
character. He is a ghost; his wife walks right through him. But he
connects the plot lines, the crack-ups, if you will, the physical and
psychological crack-ups. He is a sort of hinge, although no part of
the climax, he is a pin before and after it in the rising and falling
action.


On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 4:40 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Explict physical description is not a necessay element of
> characterization. Many a great author avoids it, yet manage to creat
> major characters.
>
>
>>> That his characters do not act like real characters is a given. VL is
>>> not Christ in Concrete; Pynchon doesn't make realistic characters that
>>> act and look like "real people."
>
>>
>> he doesn't get into a lot of explicit physical description, but a
>> pretty good picture of Webb emerges, doesn't it?  I mean, he's one of
>> the greatest unacknowledged major characters I've ever read...
>