Very nice on M & D....

[Ian Livingston]

Quite so. It is sometimes, at least, quite a fine playground. I agree
it would be, well, vain to classify it as, of all things,
auto-anything. Fiction'll do for me.

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 5:43 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."