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

[Rev'd Seventy-Six]

Like Dr. Benway, Dr. Hilarius is a figure of fun, yes, a grotesque...
but no less worth the page space, esp. being so abbreviated. I see no
problem with this formula. The picaresque or the commedia del arte,
the results are there to be read into. The shallowness you bemoan may,
dependhng on the light, may gleam with depths no less of value to the
mind than illusory to the eye. God-- or at least the divine typesetter
--knows Don DeLillo, Ishmael Reed and Cormac McCarthy trade on these
same simple tricks as readily (albeit to vastly divergent effect, per
the pen to deliver the dialogue) and get significantly less flak for
it... But then I am naming scribes noted for brevity, and P is P.

-- 
http://posthistoricpress.blogspot.com/