Misc. on Pynchon: Romancing the novel----goes out to Alice

[alice wellintown]

The only general attribute of projected romance that I can see, the
only one that fits all its cases, is the fact of the kind of
experience with which it deals—experience liberated, so to speak;
experience disengaged, disembroiled, disencumbered, exempt from the
conditions that we usually know to attach to it and, if we wish so to
put the matter, drag upon it, and operating in a medium which relieves
it, in a particular interest, of the **inconvenience** of a related, a
measurable state, a state subject to all our vulgar communities.

There are drugs enough, clearly—it is all a question of applying them
with tact; in which case the way things don't happen may be artfully
made to pass for the way things do.

excerpt from Henry James "Preface to "_The American_"

After reading Logicomix I remember thinking that Russell, who had a
rather unhappy childhood, might have taken some solace in Boys
Adventure fiction or Mary Jane.




On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 10:15 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> James sez it is when the writer communicates an "air of truth' so strong,
> one does not notice the ropelines
> are no longer attached to the earth........
>
> TRP HAS to be alluding to this preface when he cuts the Chums loose,
> right?
>
> From: Richard Ryan <therichardryan at gmail.com>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "braden.andrews at gmail.com" <braden.andrews at gmail.com>; nancy stewart
> <nancy.stewart at ingrambook.com>; alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 8:59 PM
> Subject: Re: Misc. on Pynchon: Romancing the novel----goes out to Alice
>
> I've heard James's fine formula applied to The Scarlet Letter (think of the
> moment when the A appears in the sky) as an exemplary novel that subtly and
> successfully crosses from realism to romance.  It's certainly a movement
> that occurs in all the Pynchon that I've read.
> On Jul 10, 2011 6:53 PM, "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>