Very nice on M & D....

[alice wellintown]

A little Aristolte helps. No? V. is not a confession, not a biography,
not an autobiagrphy, not an epic, not a romantic comedy, ....etc....it
helps if we can, if not agree to calssify it, to agree that some
things it is not.

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>