For Joseph (from Group W Bench & the Romantics); why Alice closed the dump on Thanksgving and other Komspiracies from the Left

[Robin Landseadel]

 From Deborah L. Madsen, "Pynchon's Quest Narratives and the Tradition  
of American Romance," Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of  
Lot 49 and Other Works , ed. Thomas H, Schaub (NY: MLA, 2008), pp.25-30:

>  "Students who have never studied American literature as a coherent
> body of knowledge evaluate Pynchon's achievement in terms of their
> familiarity with the canon of British literature.

Students who have not studied American Popular Culture and the ties  
that have historically bound that culture to big financial  
establishments evaluate Pynchon's oeuvre in terms of their familiarity  
with the canons of literature.

> Consequently, their
> perception of what constitutes a novel in English is shaped by the
> classic nineteenth-century British novelists ....  Thus, these
> students anticipate that Pynchon's language will conform loosely to
> E.M. Forster's prescription for 'round' or 'flat' characterization and
> who will inhabit fictonal settings recognizably related to the world

Pynchon pays attention to roads not taken, alternate paths and  
fictional settings somewhat related to the world but often more  
concerned with what the world might be, could have been if only . . .

As the ground was constantly shifting in that world, literature and  
its makers who should have were not paying close attention to the way  
America's post-literate language warped into what it is today.

's los, hund?

> ....  The structure of the narrative, they expect, will be based on
> the interaction of characters and the development of relationships
> among them that represent significant aspects of their culture and
> society.

As opposed to a mash-up of Gilligan's Island and Godzilla.

>  "Given these assumptions, students encounter difficulties with
> Pynchon's deployment of the quest structure, his use of language and
> symbolism, his types of characters, and their settings.

Particularly if they are in search of a single, logical explanation  
for the fantastical, "Magical Realist" [I always knew Paris Hilton was  
on to something . . . ] elements that pull Pynchon's writing away from  
established forms of the novel, such as the American Romance, Spy  
Fiction, Noir, Bildungsroman, Commedia dell'arte, Science Fiction or  
Menippean Satire -- I'm sure there's others I've missed.

> Richard
> Chase, in his classic study, The American Novel and Its Tradition
> (1957), observes that differences such as these mark American as
> opposed to English novelistic conventions.... Chase identifies what he
> calls the American 'romance-novel,' a generic classification that
> accounts for the distinctive features of the narratives that form much
> of the American literary canon: works by James Fenimore Cooper,
> Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and ... Thomas Pynchon.
>  "Chase stresses the importance of a shift in the attitude toward
> characterization: from the novelistic emphasis on comprehensive
> characterization to the romancer's interest in action and plot at the
> expense of detailed character portrayal.

Of course, many of these 'strategies of transference' also are  
essential elements of parody and satire. In Pynchon's case it's easier  
to detect elements of satire and parody than of "the romancer's  
interest in action and plot at the expense of detailed character  
portrayal."  In fact, satire and parody actively resist  detailed  
character portrayal.

> 'Character itself,' he
> writes, 'becomes ... somewhat abstract and ideal, so much so in some
> romances that it seems merely a function of plot' (13) [ellipsis in
> text].'  ..." (p. 25)

	Commedia dell'arte has three main stock roles: servant, master,
	and innamorati,[10] and the characters themselves are often
	referred to as "masks", which according to John Rudlin, cannot
	be separated from the character. In other words the
	characteristics of the character and the characteristics of the
	mask are the same.[11] The servants are referred to as the
	Zanni and include characters such as Arlecchino, Brighella and
	Pedrolino.[12] Some of the better recognized commedia
	dell'arte characters include the following: Arlecchino (also
	known as Harlequin);Pantalone; Il Dottore; Brighella; Il
	Capitano; Colombina; the Innamorati; Pedrolino; Pulcinella;
	Sandrone; Scaramuccia (also known as Scaramouche); La
	Signora; and Tartaglia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell'arte


>  "The subject matter of the quest romance is abstract moral truth
> ... as opposed to more particular sociological kinds of truth that
> arise from the ordinary or probable experiences in the novel.  As a
> consequence, the romance is set not in the recognizable world of real
> life but in some neutral space where the marvelous and the ordinary,
> the imaginary events and actual locations may meet.  The laws of
> possibility are suspended ... so that the truths of human experience
> may be acted out in the narrative....

	Satire

     	Satire is the ridicule of vice or folly. Its ostensible goal is  
to take
	an individual person, a type of person, an individual folly, or a
	type of folly, and expose it to public view. Satire doesn't have to
	be funny, though it very often is.

     	The two most influential classical Latin satirists were Horace
	and Juvenal; Horace was the more gentle, general, and good-
	natured, while Juvenal had a sharper edge to his satires.
	Satires that follow these traditions are classified as Horatian or
	Juvenalian.

http://www.hermes-press.com/menippean_satire.htm


	Well this, ah, folkloric text from the Federal Narcotics Hospital in
	Lexington Kentucky, well, more of a Prison really - people did
	sentences there, was actually inspired by Juvenal, the Roman
	satirist. He's speaking of Greek parasites and sycophants; "All
	arts, all sciences a fasting Greek knows. Bid him go to hell, to
	hell he goes...If you but say you're warm, he breaks into a
	sweat...If you complain of a draft, he calls for his overcoat."


	There is an exclusive wing of Lexington reserved for the do-
	rights, who are considered good `rehabilitation' prospects. They
	get better rooms and more medications. A do-right always
	shows up with letters from his congressman, banker, employer,
	and, you know, pictures of himself as an Eagle Scout, shakin'
	hands with a priest on graduation day. There's no limit to what
	they'll do. You know the type. Bawls all over himself to light the
	boss's cigarette.

	The Doctor walks into the ward and says, "Rather warm in
	here." As one man the do-rights break into a sweat and rush
	around opening windows. "Cold in here isn't it?" Immediately
	the do-rights see their breath in the air, snatch blankets and
	bundle themselves up to a chorus of chattering teeth. Front
	office brown-nose finks to the bone. "Doctor, when I die I want to
	be buried right in the same coffin with you! You're the finest,
	most decent, most _deeply humane_ man I have ever known."
	"I'm puttin' you down for additional medication, son." "Thank
	You, doctor! A pusher should receive the death penalty." Of
	such stuff are do-rights made. It's the Old Army Game from here
	to eternity. Get there firstest with the brownest nose.

	Well, down in the dim gray wards and day rooms where the do-
	wrongs hock and spit and shiver and vomit, "Fuckin' croaker
	wouldn't even give me a goof ball...He asked me what the
	American Flag means to me and I said `Soak it in heroin Doc,
	an' I'll suck it!' Says I've got the wrong _attitude_. I should see
	the Chaplain an' get straight with Jesus." And then, with the
	tears streaming down their lousy fink faces, the do-rights leap
	up and bellow out the Star Spangled Banner.

William S. Burroughs: The Do Rights

http://www.lucaspickford.com/burrevenroutines.htm#dorights


	A third kind of satire is harder to define: it's known as
	Menippean or Varronian satire. Although Horatian and
	Juvenalian satires are often formal verse satires, a well
	recognized genre, satire need not be in verse, and Menippean
	satire often isn't. But it's also characterized by an almost
	formless form -- Menippean satires are conventionally chaotic
	in organization, and it's usually difficult (if not impossible) to pin
	down the specific targets of ridicule. Some good examples are
	Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel and Laurence Sterne's
	Tristram Shandy. The Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin devotes
	a lot of his attention to Menippean satire in general and
	Rabelais in particular, drawing attention to what he calls their
	dialogism--the competition of several voices within a literary
	work.

http://www.hermes-press.com/menippean_satire.htm

> the highly stylized, fictional
> world of the romance: all is symbolic, but the symbolic meetings are
> not simple and obvious; rather, they are as ambiguous as the human
> situations being represented." (p. 26)

Whereas, in Pynchon some of the symbolic meetings are simple and  
obvious, as simple and obvious as Commedia dell'arte or TV sitcoms.

> "When a romance is read as a novel, inevitably the romancer's attempt
> to dramatize the hidden truths of the human condition becomes but a
> weak 'paint and pasteboard' representation of social reality....  Like
> Hawthorne, Pynchon creates characters to represent moral ideas, just
> as he uses social history ... as idea rather than as event." (ibid.)

The difference being that Pynchon uses Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones as  
art directors on his vistos, creating fleshed-out three-dimensional  
cartoons thanks to new developments in quaternions.

> "Indeed, several of the features that supposedly define Lot 49 and
> other Pynchon works as postmodern are actually characteristics of the
> American quest romance: the self-conscious foregrounding of narrative,
> the infinite deferral of meaning, the self-reflexive concern with
> reading and textuality...." (p. 30)

And several features that define "The Crying of Lot 49" come from the  
theater of Panic of Fernando Arrabal, episodes of "Perry Mason,"  
Jacobean era tragedy and classic animated cartoons of the post-war era.

But of course, what's most important is the young author's emerging  
voice.