BE as P's attempt at Greek New Comedy

[John Bailey]

You know what these things mean FS.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> John, I'd like to respond, but you lost me, so, if you don't mind, some
> basic questions:
>
> What is the old Greek comedy? What is the new Greek comedy?
> What is a Coover take?
> What is close third person?  I looked this last one up and was not convinced
> that the definition provided is what you have in mind.
>
>
> On Monday, October 7, 2013, John Bailey wrote:
>>
>> I'm increasingly wondering if the new novel isn't Pynchon's conscious
>> attempt to write a New Comedy, in contrast to the Old Comedy that most
>> of his work can be aligned with. Or, if we're going to get more
>> detailed, with the Menippean Satire that some have convincingly argued
>> is his forte. But I'm sticking with the Old/New divide of the Greeks
>> for the moment.
>>
>> It would perhaps explain why this one jars so much for so many. It's
>> sitcom, not systems analysis, and when it gives us types (Jewish
>> American, African American, Italian American) it doesn't do so in the
>> obviously ironic way his earlier works did. It doesn't give us the
>> linguistic miracles that offer a way out of the existential morass in
>> the manner we're used to P providing. It tries to offer characters
>> we're supposed to care for, which is antithetical to Old Comedy, even
>> if that mode is a more compassionate one on a structural level. BE
>> leaves us with mere people, individuals, not even a hint of the
>> preterite, which is interesting and a problem.
>>
>> A Coover take on 2001-02 would look more like what we could have
>> expected from Bleeding Edge.
>>
>> Why, in both IV and BE, has Pynchon returned to close third person
>> narration (with at least one exception in BE that I've noticed?) It's
>> not What He Does. Not even in Vineland. He toyed with it in COL49 but
>> then declared it a minor work. Why go back there?
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l