Modern world and paranoia

Wed Apr 24 15:32:44 CDT 2013

Aye. I followed your analogy but you left out the part that corresponds to the fovea.

-----Original Message-----
From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: 'Markekohut' <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: 'Tom Beshear' <tbeshear at att.net>; 'Bekah' <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>; 'Matthew Cissell' <macissell at yahoo.es>; pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, Apr 24, 2013 4:02 pm
Subject: RE: Modern world and paranoia

By "what we've learned about psychology since Henry James" I intended
either the Freudian frisson (it's naughty/dangerous/antisocial Down There)
or the Jungian frisson (our true timeless shared essence is Down There). I
eant that that a very large fraction of what we are and do simply doesn't
eed or involve  consciousness. We operate much more by instinct, habit,
mitation and environmental cues than we believe, and rationalize -- no
eprecatory connotation intended, just "come up with an articulable story
ine of reasoning and choice" -- on the fly or after the fact. 
I am looking across the room at a window. Consciousness assures me I'm
eeing countless limbs, branches, twigs and buds outside, wood grain in the
olding around the window, a light switch on the wall, grout lines between
late-ish tiles on the floor inside, bookshelves in the periphery, usw.
But only the fovea - a patch of retina about 1.5mm wide -- can deliver such
etail. The eye/brain/attention loop is so quick at flicking it around to
oints of interest that I can go through life thinking I have a large,
etailed visual field when in fact I have a very small detailed one
urrounded by a whole lot of blurs, memory, interpolation, and "nothing's
hanged much since the last time I trained foveal vision over there."
Consciousness is like that: a shell game, a highly stylized user interface
or "user illusion" as Tor Norretranders calls it in his superb book of that
itle) with little more claim to ontological primacy than the "folders" on
he"desktop" of this computer. It's a recent evolutionary add-on, shiny and
un, and I'd hate to give it up -- but lordgodamighty, must it take itself
o seriously as to anoint *one* literary tradition as "psychological
ealism"?
----Original Message-----
rom: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
f Markekohut
ent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 2:32 PM
o: Monte Davis
c: Tom Beshear; Bekah; Matthew Cissell; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
ubject: Re: Modern world and paranoia
Yes. Like.
It has occurred to me that another of Wood's--and most--faves Jane Austen's
irst novel Northanger Abbey could serve as an allegory of Wood's position,
o to speak. 
usten's young heroine's perceptions--seeing the " real world" aright---are
ll distorted by the reading of Gothic Romances, specifically The Castle of
tranto....Wood wants the world seen aright.....
Which leads me to add this addendum to Monte's words: yes, the narrator sees
hat the characters cannot articulate and is real not least because of the "
iscovery" the awareness of the Subconscious, the unconscious ala Freud,
ung ---made semi-articulate by them for use by the mind of the
riter---(yes, yes, those hidden aspects of us might have been seen by
arlier writers as well but.....round about 1910 human nature
hanged--v.Woolf.) 
Can one see the Giant Adenoid in GR as a kind of metaphor for the devouring
ark Side of the mind? ( I do not really mean TRP intended it so baldly but
hat given the truths Monte gets to, then why not such a half-conscious
ymbol? 
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
itch dark.

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

 "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
pontaneity 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
he 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
on'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
ood.

 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
hings.

 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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