Very nice on M & D....

[Ian Livingston]

Yes. I s'pose I'm playing rather too loosely with the term
"autobiography." Or, perhaps, rather too tightly. Anyhow, outside the
accepted usage.

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 2:43 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely. That a work has an author or is the product of an author's
> mind doesn't make all works autobiography or autobiographical.
>
> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there any such a thing as fiction that is not, to some greater or
>> lesser degree, autobiographical? If it's fiction, it springs from the
>> mind of it's writer, right? What else could it be but autobiography?
>> The names have been changed to protect the innocent, the actions of
>> the characters reshaped by imagination, and the plot sifted and
>> synthesized from a selection of observations, but, in the end, it must
>> necessarily be a map of some part of the psyche of it's writer.
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:18 AM, alice wellintown
>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Of course it is the poetic quality of his prose and not the kazoo
>>> songs and Tube-jingles; that is one reason why I quoted Fitzgerald in
>>> a prior post. Note too that the Fitzgerald poem appears as a prose
>>> paragraph and not in verse and stanzas in the text, This Side of
>>> Paradise. The beauty of Fitzgerald's prose, its ghostly lilting, its
>>> romantic whispers, its full-throated ease, its gyres turning and
>>> turning, its fantastic wastelands, its parades of paradises lost and
>>> longed for seem to haunt Pynchon's prose.  Of course, as you note,
>>> modern prose and poetry, a post-romantic prose, is, like all modern
>>> art, experiment and cross fertilization, between cultures,  between
>>> art forms and between disciplines.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Are you referring, Ms Alice, to the Poetic Quality his prose takes on, more
>>>> than his actual poems and songs, as to what makes him great?
>>>> As I recall Miss Marianne Moore sez in her poem "The Past Is The Present",
>>>> "Hebrew poetry is prose with a sort of heightened consciousness",
>>>> I reckon this could apply to Pynchon, as well as a handful of other 20th
>>>> century prose writers.
>>>> Tho' I am especially fond of that Timothy Tox, and the various songs
>>>> throughout Pynchonia (The Aqyn, The Song of Byron the Bulb, et al.)
>>>> (hums to self) "Light up and shine up you in-can-descent Bulb Babies..."
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 6:23 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, one may argue the autobiographical nature of lots of works:
>>>>> Joyce's Portrait, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Melville's Typee,  & Co.,
>>>>> however, to confuse a parody such as IV with an Autobiography doesn't
>>>>> argue the autobiographical nature of the work.
>>>>>
>>>>> In any event, we were discussing what it is that makes P's works great
>>>>> and I think those of the aesthic crew here know that it is his poetry.
>>>>> Tom wanted to be a poet. I guess all great authors aspire to music or
>>>>> something like that.
>>>>>
>>>>> The last light wanes and drifts across the land,
>>>>> The low, long land, the sunny land of spires.
>>>>> The ghosts of evening tune again their lyres
>>>>> And wander singing, in a plaintive band
>>>>> Down the long corridors of trees. Pale fires
>>>>> Echo the night from tower top to tower.
>>>>> Oh sleep that dreams and dream that never tires,
>>>>> Press from the petals of the lotus-flower
>>>>> Something of this to keep, the essence of an hour!
>>>>>
>>>>> No more to wait the twilight of the moon
>>>>> In this sequestrated vale of star and spire;
>>>>> For one, eternal morning of desire
>>>>> Passes to time and earthy afternoon.
>>>>> Here, Heracletus, did you build of fire
>>>>> And changing stuffs your prophecy far hurled
>>>>> Down the dead years; this midnight I aspire
>>>>> To see, mirrored among the embers, curled
>>>>> In flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  http://www.caxtonclub.org/reading/2001/August2001/scottFitz.htm
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> > Alice, you may never make sense of a Critical Mind if you do not
>>>>> > practice
>>>>> > the art of Strongly Misreading...?
>>>>> > As for a novel or parody of a novel not being the same as Autobiography
>>>>> > see
>>>>> > Mark Twain's which may as well be a novel or a parody of one
>>>>> >  (tho' I believe his Autobiography Proper was published recently).
>>>>> > One may also argue the autobiographical nature of many great Novels...?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "liber enim librum aperit."
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."