The Traverse Trail - Too many?

[Mark Kohut]

Can't remember this Katie Elder coming up before....thanks.

I repeat myself, I'm sure, when I proclaim loudly that Webb's ideals cum moral 
failings are carried through all the sons as different threads of how
the sins of the father ripple and work out in history, in America. 

Whether the characters are "round" enough to be memorable is one discussion 
question, imho. Reading it again helps, I suggest.

That their plotline threads embody quite different paths of moral 
inheritance--and karmic adjustment--we all remember on one reading.

Pynchon wanted all four for good reasons, I say.




________________________________
From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thu, September 30, 2010 1:56:19 PM
Subject: The Traverse Trail - Too many?


Hello P-people,
    
    I'm not following the V. reading and I only occasionally dip into the 
comments, but this bit caught my eye since it has to do with the number of 
characters in AD and specifically the Traverse family & its narrative(s). Bear 
with me.
    "If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him" (Wittgenstein PI pt II 
sec. xi). Let us extend this line of thought. If someone from an isolated 
culture (e.g., Sentinelese) could be taught English they would probably 
understand a hunting story, but would they understand a western as an example of 
a narrative genre in books and films? Likely not. However, many people in 
developed and developing countries do. They have the cultural competence that 
allows them to recognize icons and symbols that define the genre.
    We (being the specifically cultured readers in this conversation) read about 
Lew Basnight and we start to think of Marlowe and other detective types (but 
probably not Miss Marple). What then of the Traverse brothers? Do they 
correspond to a generic and indefinite type?
    I propose that just as Lew Basnight brings Marlowe to mind,  the Traverse 
narrative bears some resemblance to the classic western film "The Sons of Katie 
Elder". The elements of revenge (of Webb Traverse) and maintaining the family 
name and it's prestige (by continuing Webb's work and also Kit's social rise) 
parallel the movie and the book it was based on. However, incorporating this 
into the novel necessitates multiple siblings: the story wouldn't be the same 
with one or two brothers.
    Whether "it works" better than V. or not is the decision of each reader. 
Lets remember that Joyce's brother Stanislaus (and a number of others) thought 
Ulysses was much better than Finnegan's Wake. 


 



________________________________
 From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: kelber at mindspring.com
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Thu, September 30, 2010 12:38:21 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chap 8 / I have really never read this book this closely 
before

>  wouldn't two or one Traverse brother have worked just as well?

Perhaps even better.

To me the brothers appear like the nephews of Donald Duck:

I never can tell them apart!

Kai


On 29.09.2010 16:58, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> No, I think it was less successful in ATD.  V. gives us Stencil and Profane to 
>follow, to sympathize with,  to rest on (as a crutch?  Maybe, but fiction's 
>supposed to make us care, isn't it?).  I feel Profane's apathy in the face of 
>forces he's afraid of; I feel Stencil's urgency to solve a riddle that's a 
>metaphor for all that ails the 20th century.
>
> The vast list of poorly-realized, often redundant characters (wouldn't two or 
>one Traverse brother have worked just as well?)in ATD gives us no such crutch, 
>no empathy, no viewpoint with which to view the vast historical currents 
>portrayed in the book.  P might have been attempting to illustrate quantum 
>theory (his characters are only discreet parcels of energy that are likely to be 
>present at a given place and time), leaving us pretty much on our own.  The book 
>is part poetry, part parody and part documentary, with fictional narrative 
>absent.  So no, V. does it better: it makes me care.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>    
>> From: Robin Landseadel<robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>>      
>    
>> On Sep 29, 2010, at 7:35 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> But doesn't the human interest part of the story show that, like
>>> Tolstoy said, the infinitesimal movements of individuals are actually
>>> the components of these historical currents and there really is
>>> something else going on that's worth paying attention to and deriving
>>> a counter-moral?
>>>        
>> And isn't that sooooooooooo much more successfully realized in
>> "Against the Day," using more or less the same basic mis-en-scene as
>> the Stencilization inside 'V."?
>>
>>       
>
>
>    


      
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