Modern world and paranoia

[Antonin Scriabin]

Sometimes a dream-state Giant Adenoid is just a dream-state Giant Adenoid.


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
>
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