The WreckIgnitions Read. Snarky question

[alice wellintown]

Saracism is usually defined as a caustic, bitter, biting, expression
of strong disapproval.

Pynchon and Gaddis use sarcasim. We can find lotz of examples in the texts.

Sarcasim can be combined with hyperbole. Hyperbole is usually defined
as the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech
that evokes strong feelings.

Again, both authors combine sarcasm with hyperbole.

If Gaddis has a caustic tone, that is, a caustic attitude toward his
subjects, characters, readers, etc., and he uses sarcastic diction,
ironic tropes and schemes, and other rhetorical strategies and forms
of irony, one could argue that his style is, in addition to other
things, sarcastic. Right? So, I can't get what you are getting at
here.

If WG's Style and TRP's style are to be compared or contrasted or
juxtaposed ot whatever to enhance or inform a study or discussion or
reading of either or both here, setting them in unique pigion holes is
not very useful.

And, anywayz, there must be a reason why we are reading WG and not
Jane Austin here, who is, I'll take a page from Nabokov here, a
superior ironist and spinner of the ironic web than WG or TRP.

Certainly Pynchon's use of the over-the-top Marx Brothers and
Tubed-out humor and language of the California works is often over
done and, in IV certainly, though not so much in VL or in CL49, a
weakness.


On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com> wrote:
> I think of sarcasm as the hyperbolic expression of an emotional or
> mental state to achieve ironic or deflationary effect. And since
> Gaddis's tone is not exaggerated - rather it's caustic and droll - I'm
> not sure I'd agree with the ascription of sarcasm to this work.
>
> The big news here is that Gaddis has style and tone of humor which is
> distinctive and dramatic enough that I find he clearly earns his own
> adjective - Gaddisian - in the same way that Pynchon has by the power
> of his style and voice created his own "brand."
>
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> And, since I probably was not clear, that superiority that generates sarcasm
>> is the narrator----Can't yet call him Gaddis hisself but a close relative, so to
>> speak,
>> I'd think......
>>
>> I am still surprised by the seemingly omniscient narrator....expecting
>> much more the limited omniscience of many novelists...like TRP, others of HIS
>> time and since....from The Good Soldier
>> even Hank James was not always so omniscient....
>>
>> In a way, The Recognitions is narrated like an old-fashioned 19th Century novel
>> yet is not even close to the most famous beyond that....................
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> To: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sat, April 9, 2011 10:55:28 AM
>> Subject: Re: The WreckIgnitions Read. Snarky question
>>
>> A--and, much more sarcasm in Gaddis?....good, bad, neither (just different)?
>>
>>
>> Sarcasm in general---true here?---comes from what some might call more arrogance
>> than playfulness........narrator writes from a higher plane of superiority than
>> V. ever
>> inhabits, yes?.....and even GR? Gaddis is more Swiftian in his savageness than
>> Pynchon----but Pynchon imagines over-the-top more like Swift. (What he sez
>> surrealism
>> might have opened him to...conceits like a game of extreme metaphor)
>>
>> Which, again---choose C above---just says something about the overwhelmingness
>> on Gaddis vision herein, yes? Dark as a lie.....He KNOWS faking it is
>> everywhere.......
>> For him the famous line might be: "The tower is nowhere"....?
>>
>> Pynchon on the page, although also a dramatically dark vision of History and
>> America in V......and GR.......
>>
>> laughs more?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
>> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; pov at ix.netcom.com
>> Sent: Sat, April 9, 2011 10:35:35 AM
>> Subject: Re: The WreckIgnitions Read. Snarky question
>>
>> Concur.  Gaddis: dry, wry.  Pynchon: boisterous, sometime (to his
>> cost) buffoonish.
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Gaddis, Pynchon, both 'comic' writers--as Erik Burns has helped me--us?--focus
>>> on.
>>>
>>>
>>> But Gaddis's wit, so laconic via the narrator, as They say of English wit is
>>> much
>>> more what we have come to label snarky than Pynchon's
>>>
>>> Which is, often simply juvenile and otherwise just Falstaff-exuberant on the
>>> page.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes? Discuss among ourselves.....
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Richard Ryan
>> New York and the World
>> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>> Come see VTM's new production!
>> www.kingstheplay.com
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Richard Ryan
> New York and the World
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
> Come see VTM's new production!
> www.kingstheplay.com
>