from Puritansm to Postmodernism (Pynchon's Parodic Romance)

[Mark Kohut]

And your good analysis reinforces P's twisting, self-seen embodiment of the Anti-Romance in the Romance that is ATD--call it postmodern if you care to--

One might gloss: All our views are Romantic, even mine, yet there IS a reality there which I point to as I say I point and as I indict my common human eyes along with everyone's. 

Or, there is a reality even I cannot get to---which dovetales with knowing that trying to articulate Shambala (and such) automatically reduces it...



--- On Sun, 2/21/10, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: from Puritansm to Postmodernism (Pynchon's Parodic Romance)
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, February 21, 2010, 3:36 PM
> But AGTD is a Romance. HF is not. We
> might put Crane in here, say "To
> Build a Fire" just to have a Naturalist tale that also
> centers on the
> lack of imagination but anyway ...One could argue that
> Tom's
> imagination, like Quixote's is too powerful or active or
> that Tom uses
> his to exploit the other lads or to control their Play.
> Certainly
> these are all themes of Huckleberry Finn, an anti-Romantic
> view, a
> Humorist's Realism that does, of course, because it is an
> American
> story, use most of the elements of American Romance (the
> Gothic
> elements) but is not a Romance. Although P too explores the
> limits and
> faults of the Romance, he embraces it. He states as much in
> several
> essays.
> 
> The Romance is far from a male dominated genre or
> form.  Your
> wonderful synopsis of AGTD's travels seems to miss the
> point that the
> author has taken a side by writing Romances; that the text
> veers away
> from the fantastic or romantic and toward what seems real
> is also an
> element of Romance.
> 
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> wrote:
> > Excellent Twain quote. It seems to me that you have
> not particularly
> > weakened the idea that Pynchon, like Twain,  counters
> romanticism with
> > anti-romanticism, particularly in ATD. Classical
> romanticism was largely an
> > all male club and The Chums start out in that club and
> seeing the world
> > through classic romance colored glasses- the
> mountaineers, indian fighters,
> > explorers, prophets of the dirigible set.  They go
> through a post modern
> > examination of who they are working for, what are the
> motives, what is the
> > nature and motive of those they have opposed, what are
> proper decision
> > making processes and they  also connect to their
> feminine other. In short ,
> > considering that they float around the planet
> interacting with both the real
> > and imagined and sail through the middle of the earth
> on hot air( artists,
> > missionaries, agents of the imagination), their
> overall tendency is to  get
> > real. They still represent an above the world view,
> but is that a romantic
> > view or just the nature of being human , of inhabiting
> a narrative or
> > spiritual vessel of being neither hopeless nor
> delusional? I don't see P
> > taking sides in this question but showing the
> beauties, strengths,
> > delusions, and failures of both sides. Kit in his dive
> bombing  phase is a
> > kind of Tom Sawyer gone bad and Lake  or Frank in his
>  train bombing phase
> > is  a kind of Huck gone bad.
> >
> > On Feb 21, 2010, at 1:56 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> >
> >> Here is Twain. Tom is a Romantic and Huck is more
> pragmatic or
> >> realistic. What side is P on? Is he closer to Tom
> Sawyer or
> >> Huckleberry? The notion that P's works are
> anti-Romances is absurd.
> >> Sorry, Mark. You are simply dead wrong on this
> one.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> We played robber now and then about a month, and
> then I resigned. All
> >> the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't
> killed any people, but
> >> only just pretended. We used to hop out of the
> woods and go charging
> >> down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking
> garden stuff to market,
> >> but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called
> the hogs "ingots,"
> >> and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and
> we would go to the
> >> cave and powwow over what we had done, and how
> many people we had
> >> killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in
> it. One time Tom
> >> sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick,
> which he called a
> >> slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get
> together), and then he
> >> said he had got secret news by his spies that next
> day a whole parcel
> >> of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to
> camp in Cave Hollow
> >> with two hundred elephants, and six hundred
> camels, and over a
> >> thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with
> di'monds, and they
> >> didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers,
> and so we would lay
> >> in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot
> and scoop the things.
> >> He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and
> get ready. He never
> >> could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have
> the swords and guns
> >> all scoured up for it,  though they was only lath
> and broomsticks, and
> >> you might scour at them till you rotted, and then
> they warn't worth a
> >> mouthful of ashes more than what they was before.
> I didn't believe we
> >> could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs,
> but I wanted to see
> >> the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next
> day, Saturday, in the
> >> ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out
> of the woods and
> >> down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and
> A-rabs, and there
> >> warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't
> anything but a
> >> Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at
> that. We busted it
> >> up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we
> never got anything
> >> but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got
> a rag doll, and Jo
> >> Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the
> teacher charged in,
> >> and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see
> no di'monds, and I
> >> told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of
> them there, anyway; and
> >> he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants
> and things. I said,
> >> why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I
> warn't so ignorant, but
> >> had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know
> without asking. He
> >> said it was all done by enchantment. He said there
> was hundreds of
> >> soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so
> on, but we had
> >> enemies which he called magicians; and they had
> turned the whole thing
> >> into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I
> said, all right;
> >> then the thing for us to do was to go for the
> magicians. Tom Sawyer
> >> said I was a numskull.
> >>
> >>   "Why," says he, "a magician could call up a lot
> of genies, and they
> >> would hash you up like nothing before you could
> say Jack Robinson.
> >> They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a
> church."
> >>
> >>   "Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to
> help us -- can't we
> >> lick the other crowd then?"
> >>
> >>   "How you going to get them?"
> >>
> >>   "I don't know. How do they get them?"
> >>
> >>   "Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring,
> and then the genies
> >> come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning
> a-ripping around and
> >> the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told
> to do they up and do
> >> it. They don't think nothing of pulling a
> shot-tower up by the roots,
> >> and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over
> the head with it -- or
> >> any other man."
> >>
> >>   "Who makes them tear around so?"
> >>
> >>   "Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They
> belong to whoever
> >> rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do
> whatever he says. If
> >> he tells them to build a palace forty miles long
> out of di'monds, and
> >> fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want,
> and fetch an
> >> emperor's daughter from China for you to marry,
> they've got to do it
> >> -- and they've got to do it before sun-up next
> morning, too. And more:
> >> they've got to waltz that palace around over the
> country wherever you
> >> want it, you understand."
> >>
> >>   "Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of
> flat-heads for not
> >> keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling
> them away like that.
> >> And what's more -- if I was one of them I would
> see a man in Jericho
> >> before I would drop my business and come to him
> for the rubbing of an
> >> old tin lamp."
> >>
> >>   "How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd have to
> come when he rubbed
> >> it, whether you wanted to or not."
> >>
> >>   "What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a
> church? All right,
> >> then; I would come; but I lay I'd make that man
> climb the highest tree
> >> there was in the country."
> >>
> >>   "Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck
> Finn. You don't seem
> >> to know anything, somehow -- perfect saphead."
> >>
> >>   I thought all this over for two or three days,
> and then I reckoned
> >> I would see if there was anything in it. I got an
> old tin lamp and an
> >> iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed
> and rubbed till I
> >> sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace
> and sell it; but it
> >> warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I
> judged that all that
> >> stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I
> reckoned he believed
> >> in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I
> think different. It
> >> had all the marks of a Sunday-school.
> >
> >
>