V-2nd - 2: Part II - questions, comments?

[Mark Kohut]

Alice writes:
Grant suggests that
readers who continue to expect traditional fictional elements in V.
will misread the text. This is not quite correct. As McHale points
out, V. is  modernism not postmodernism. We may agree with Wood or not
when he refutes Gass's claim and sez, to deny charater is to deny the
novel, but P certainly agrees with Wood and not Gass.

 
Modernism, yes, I have always believed,,,,but
then why did he so change Under the Rose?....a mistake by the slow learner?

a...And, one does not need to be arguing that P shifts to a postmodern view of
character because of the changes made to Under the Rose.....only that that
section fit--in TRP's mind---by being less of character than the story 
was........
quite a reasonable author's decision since the major and most minor characters
are given lots more room in V............to add another, so to speak, destroys 
the thrust.

Ever read Murdoch arguing that one reason why Shakespeare is THE GREATEST writer
is that he gives such immediate life to even throwaway characters?.........TRP 
could/
cannot do THAT very often..............



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, July 9, 2010 10:49:52 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - 2: Part II - questions, comments?

P's early stories are novice attempts to construct characters from his
slow learning studies of fiction, drama ...and his attempt to make his
strories and his characters literate and from his readings in
psychology and so on. His use of dream stuff in TSI , for example,
cripples what is, otherwise, an great tale and certainly better than
anyhting else he wrote prior to GR.  That we can see the big
improvement in the tale moved to V. (Under the Rose) seems to suggest
that P was not quiie as slow as his own assessment indicates, but to
argue that the tale in V. is better because P shifted to some
postmodern view of character--traditional character development is not
a P objective in V. can not be squared with P's reading of his own
tale and his statements about characters and his attempts to construct
them. in his Introduction to the V. Companion, Grant suggests that
readers who continue to expect traditional fictional elements in V.
will misread the text. This is not quite correct. As McHale points
out, V. is  modernism not postmodernism. We may agree with Wood or not
when he refutes Gass's claim and sez, to deny charater is to deny the
novel, but P certainly agrees with Wood and not Gass.

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Some fine scholar--not me--- sez the difference between Under the Rose the 
>story
> and in the novel is that P ELIMINATED much character 
psychology.......obviously
> showing he wanted to focus on historical meaning NOT the people....(take THAT,
> james wood)
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Tue, July 6, 2010 4:38:03 PM
> Subject: RE: V-2nd - 2: Part II - questions, comments?
>
> It does seem that V. draws from some of Pynchon's early stories, most notably
> Under the Rose, but also Mortality and Mercy in Vienna, Entropy and maybe, in
> terms of his first dealings with racism, The Secret Integration.  Even if his
> starting point was a bunch of his stories, though, the book never feels like a
> bunch of disconnected stories gratuitously lumped together into a novel.  He's
> done a damn good job of carrying themes and imagery (mirrors and clocks!)
> through the book, even as the narratorial tone changes.
>
> Compare this feat with a book like Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by David Mitchell
> (which I know a number of frequenters of this list have read), which, IMO, 
>fails
> to connect the disparate stories.
>
> Laura
> (trying to catch up)
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
>
>
>>Do you think that the alternating narrators is a conscious echo of some other
>>work, like Bleakhouse, or do you think that this just the result of mashing a
>>couple of short stories together into a novel, the setting up of the twin 
tales
>>up as two stems on a V running toward each other?
>>
>
>
>
>
>