from Puritansm to Postmodernism (Pynchon's Parodic Romance)

[Joseph Tracy]

So what, in your view, are the identifying characteristics of a  
"Romance"? I just feel that great writers create their own literary  
formats.  Emotional intensity ? How is Oedipus Rex or Cupid and  
Psyche not emotional? Nature? How is Turner not a precursor to  
abstraction? How is Ahab not a classical tragic hero?    I see  a  
term like romanticism as useful in distinguishing  some  
characteristics of a period and body of work, but inherently  
imperfect , and ultimately not truly definitive.

As I see it a lot of this is like the debate between the quaternions  
and the vectorists or the implied debate between chemistry and  
alchemy.  The important thing is not allegiance to a given camp but  
creativity in one's actual field of action, not the speed and ever-  
increasing efficiency of technology but the  ability to make  
technological choices that avoid insanity and self destruction.




On Feb 21, 2010, at 3:36 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> 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.
>>
>>