P's farcical figures: small, short lived, flat.

[alice wellintown]

P stuffs his works with these figures. Other major authors, Dickens is
usually mentioned, have done the same. Call them cartoons, if you prefer,
but to argue that cartoons, minor, flat, short lived characters are a
weakness is silly. While P is not Dickens, is not a 19th century author, so
his characters are not really Dickensian, they are, as are the figures in
Dickens's novels, comic figures. Like flat cartoon characters, we get
balloons of their thoughts, often from a narrative voice that assumes a
voice, a diction, tone to fit the character. This is not that difficult for
an author, not one of P's talent, certainly. It does, however, challange
the reader. So, we have a novelist making cartoons to strut and fret an
hour of farce on the vaudeville, some of this is, given th corny, juvenile,
quirky sense of humor it mimics and mocks, parodies, and stylizes, and the
author's penchant for puerile puns and goofy adolescent dry humping the
blow up dolls under the bed while the orchestra plays a kazoo requiem for a
falling body that splats on the sidewalk on that sacred day...and...why
take offense or get defensive...or serious....it's only a figure of farce?

Does not a farce figure bleed?
P is a Shylark!
He got my pound of death. I wish he didn't get my dollars for the stones he
bled with his edges.
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