Modern world and paranoia

[Markekohut]

Yes. Like.

It has occurred to me that another of Wood's--and most--faves Jane Austen's first novel
Northanger Abbey could serve as an allegory of Wood's position, so to speak. 
Austen's young heroine's perceptions--seeing the " real world" aright---are all distorted by the reading of Gothic Romances, specifically The Castle of Otranto....Wood wants the world seen aright.....

Which leads me to add this addendum to Monte's words: yes, the narrator sees what the characters cannot articulate and is real not least because of the " discovery" the awareness of the Subconscious, the unconscious ala Freud, Jung ---made semi-articulate by them for use by the mind of the writer---(yes, yes, those hidden aspects of us might have been seen by earlier writers as well but.....round about 1910 human nature changed--v.Woolf.) 

Can one see the Giant Adenoid in GR as a kind of metaphor for the devouring Dark Side of the mind? ( I do not really mean TRP intended it so baldly but that given the truths Monte gets to, then why not such a half-conscious symbol? 

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 24, 2013, at 1:00 PM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> 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
>