Modern world and paranoia

[Monte Davis]

What is meant by "realism" is a moving window. I esteem James very highly,
too, but he wanted to articulate every last velleity, to bring It All up
into focused light -- and if the intervening century of psychology
(including not least William James)  has taught us anything, it's how much
goes on in the penumbra and the shadows and the pitch dark.

Compare Isabel Archer realizing what Osmond and Madame Merle had been up to:

"Now that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much
concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to
play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their
mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose
before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand
trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver..."

... with Tyrone apprehending in bursts the vastness of the horrors at play
in the casino:

"Around the tables, Empire chairs are lined up precise and playerless. But
some are taller than the rest. These are no longer quite outward and visible
signs of a game of chance. There is another enterprise here, more real than
that, less merciful, and systematically hidden from the likes of Slothrop.
Who sits in the taller chairs? Do They have names? What lies on Their smooth
baize surfaces?...[Penguin pb 202]

"Voices, music, the shuffling of cards all grow louder, more oppressive,
till he stands looking into the Himmler-Spielsaal again, crowded now, jewels
flashing, leather gleaming, roulette spokes whirling blurring-it's here that
saturation hits him, it's all this playing games, too much of it, too many
games: the nasal, obsessive voice of a croupier he can't see-messieurs,
mesdames, les jeux sont faits-is suddenly speaking out of the Forbidden Wing
directly to him, and about what Slothrop has been playing against the
invisible House, perhaps after all for his soul, all day-terrified he turns,
turns out into the rain again where the electric lights of the Casino, in
full holocaust, are glaring off the glazed cobbles..." [205]

There's a lot to say (and admire) about how the narrative voice in the first
passage represents Isabel's consciousness, but for now my point is that it
does so *stably*, with consistent rules for seeing what she sees and knowing
what she knows. In  the second passage, not so much: the voice dips in and
out, telling us things -- even  drawing attention to the telling of things
-- explicitly "hidden from the likes of Slothrop."

Could Tyrone explain the weight and connotations of "outward and visible
signs"? of "holocaust"? No way. Are they legitimate parts of the world of a
descendant of Constant Slothrop, a soldier in the wake of Hitler? Yes. Do
they give *me* a shiver at least as chill and penetrating as the one I got
through the more precisely controlled channel from Isabel? Damn straight
they do. Wood thinks that's clownish Tom playing without a net, breaking the
rules; I think Tom is expanding "psychological realism" to take in more of
what we are, but don't/can't know or say.  

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Tom Beshear
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 11:04 AM
To: Bekah; Matthew Cissell
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Modern world and paranoia

Judging from How Fiction Works, Wood's ideal is Henry James, which means he
prizes psychological realism above all else. And that's not what Pynchon,
DeLillo, Wallace, Vollmann, etc. etc., are doing.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bekah" <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
To: "Matthew Cissell" <macissell at yahoo.es>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 10:08 AM
Subject: Re: Modern world and paranoia


Sounds to me like Wood gets confused between what he likes and what is good.

Just because a reader doesn't personally like a book doesn't mean it's not 
fine lit.   Paranoia could be a part of 21st century realism the way 
religion was often a part of Victorian lit.  I tend to appreciate Wood, 
too - but I think he's stuck in the early 20th century about some things.

Bekah


On Apr 24, 2013, at 2:29 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> Nowadays it doesn't take anytime at all to form a conspiracy theory. Go 
> ask Gene Rosen who helped some kids on his driveway the day of the Newtown

> masacre, poor man.
> And now we have Boston. Several witnesses have identified the supect as 
> the perp, video footage, and now an admission of guilt - and people claim 
> it is a conspiracy; check out the movement to protect poor little Dzokhar 
> from THEM.
> So given all this we must address James Wood's claim (in his essay on 
> DeLillo from the Broken Estate): "Indeed, Underworld proves, once and for 
> all, or so I must hope, the incompatability of the political paranoid 
> vision with great fiction." Further along he says that paranoia is bad for

> the novel. Hmm.
>
> I readily admit my admiration for Wood's erudition and critical prose, 
> however, my admiration ends there. In trying to advance his mission 
> (reshaping the view of literature through his choice of lens) he goes too 
> far out on a limb that will not support the weight of his ego or inflated 
> ideas.
>
> Now I suppose Alice might bring me up on all that but I can handle it. 
> Waddayathink AL? Is Jimmy Wood right about paranoia and the novel?
>
> ciao
> mc otis