Pynchon mention, or: Is it really that funny?

[Matthew Cissell]

Of course funny jokes are not the "whole story", but I think we must say that the element of humour is decidedly important. Here it would be pertinent to quote Kai's Landsmann and Living Laureate, Herr Grass, from a dialogue with Pierre Bourdieu.     G.G: "When I say humour, I mean that tragedy and comedy aren’t mutually exclusive; the boundaries between the two are fluid. " (Le Monde 1999, or http://newleftreview.org/II/14/pierre-bourdieu-gunter-grass-the-progressive-restoration).

I think we can agree that "his work is definitely not a joke", however that does not exclude the possibility of a risus purus (a la Beckett) above and beyond the puns and jokes.

Without getting into Schmitt, I will say this, one does not shake off any religious upbringing easily. (We can thank the Jesuits for Voltaire and Joyce, great critics of the RCC.) How `happy´ is that felix culpa? How sad?

Und wir, die an steigendes Glück
denken, empfänden die Rührung,
die uns beinah bestürzt, 
wenn ein Glückliches fällt


As for that "something about the characters' failure which cannot be explained in rational terms", well there is too much to say without making this overly long. Let me simply say that I agree that there is a definite "seriousness" (gravitas) regarding these characters and their actions, though I don't think I would go as far as to choose the adjective catholic.

Whether the Saxon author was name dropping or not ist mir egal.

ciao
mc otis

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From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2013 12:46 PM
Subject: Pynchon mention, or: Is it really that funny?



http://goingdutchwithgermanwriters.wordpress.com/

"He reads very little, he said. But he seems to go to libraries and get fixations with things – Thomas Pynchon made him laugh out loud and get chucked out of the library the other day, apparently." 

There are funny things in Pynchon - the rocket limericks, or the
    dialogues of Zoyd and Hector -, but I doubt the whole story and I'm
    not sure that humor is decisive for Pynchon's art. It's not that I
    don't like humor in literature, I just think it's not Pynchon's
    domain, and the image of Pynchon as a funny writer has become a
    cliché by now. At least over here. And while it's true that it is
    very hard to tell - and the longer you read the harder it becomes -
    what Pynchon is actually saying, his work is definitely not a joke.
    Carl Schmitt says that all valid political theories - like the ones
    of Hobbes and Machiavelli - do consider the human being to be evil.
    As a catholic social theorists Schmitt traces this tradition back to
    original sin. For Pynchon, too, original sin - or "inherent vice" -
    is what makes people do what they do. This is not saying that
    Pynchon does not point out socio-historical factors like slavery,
    Prussian militarism, or industrialization which certainly do
    contribute to the whole mess. But there's always - the cases of
    Frenesi and Lake make this clear - something about the characters'
    failure which cannot be explained in rational terms. This is what I
    call Pynchon's catholic seriousness. It's what makes his literature
    true. Far more important than the dope jokes and the scatology. Feel
    free to disagree.