Cowart & how P avoids the postmodern problem with history (Fredric Jameson)

[alice wellintown]

thanks. I get it now.

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:42 PM, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
> The passage in question, beginning at the bottom of 22, refers to Pynchon's
> apparent grounding in 'doctrines of realism' (Watt's The Rise of the Novel
> was published in the late-50s) that go back to the C18th and are therefore
> contemporaneous with Johnson's swing at a stone that might or might not have
> resembled Berkeley. My view is that Watt should be read in the context of
> early Williams and the early social history of, eg, Hobsbawm and Thompson:
> rather than confirming the pre-eminence of a 'traditional' realism that owes
> more to the late-C19th, Watt attempted to uncover messy beginnings that have
> a lot in common with contemporary post-realisms. How far he did so
> successfully is another matter. Johnson was 'proving' the existence of the
> real world; unfortunately there are still a lot of Johnsons kicking stones
> every time they hear the term postmodernism. The latter, as Cowart points
> out, deals with representations of 'the real'; and Pynchon's 'often
> hetero-historiographic narratives' simply deal with the way the real has
> been represented at different times (see, eg, Cowart's earlier reference to
> AtD on 20, issues discussed here on pynchon-l).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
> Of alice wellintown
> Sent: 25 July 2012 19:10
> To: pynchon -l
> Subject: Cowart & how P avoids the postmodern problem with history (Fredric
> Jameson)
>
> speaking of misreadings, I must admit that I ca not follow Cowart here on
> page 23 where he sets out to define or describe  how P devised a genre that
> somehow fits into our postmodern realism. the allusion to johnson and
> kicking a stone, as I read it, is Cowart;s own bit of
> sophistry.   a rather critical point is muddled by the allusion.
> anyone?
>