Modern world and paranoia

[Markekohut]

Sometimes. 

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 24, 2013, at 2:35 PM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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