from Puritansm to Postmodernism (Pynchon's Parodic Romance)

[Mark Kohut]

Joseph,

Alice and I both know and have both accepted, at minimum, Richard Chase's classic lit crit study of the American Romance.

I'm great at (over) simplifying, sometimes---and I hope alice gives you a fuller definition---but for our working purposes I would define thus:

Romance has an overriding component of the visionarily irreal whereas

a non-Romance is a novel in the social realist, things as they are, tradition.

Of course, many books overlap and, of course, although Huck Finn is 'realistic', Twain, of course, put a vision into the realism: "All right, I'll go to hell", etc......

All the themes you bring up are real and generally need a fictional world beyond 'realism' which is why we are all reading and talking Pynchon. 

--- On Sun, 2/21/10, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Re: from Puritansm to Postmodernism (Pynchon's Parodic Romance)
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, February 21, 2010, 7:21 PM
> 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.
> >> 
> >> 
> 
>