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

[Paul Mackin]

On 7/26/2012 9:10 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
> thanks. I get it now.

One can read a generously sizable chunk of The Rise of the Novel on 
Amazon using the Inside the Book feature.

P
>
> 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?
>>