The Pale King

[Fiona Shnapple]

When I read Joyce, first Ulysses and Dubliners, because they were on a
Syllabus, I knew almost nothing about Joyce or Ireland, Catholicism or
Homer, not to mention Aquinas, and, in a way, I am equally ignorant of DFW,
his life and death, and I read only IJ, over a long period, on and off, and
though I know some things about W, these don't inform my reading of PK.
Though later I read Ellmann on Joyce, Portrait, lots more, I still prefer
the pure pleasure of reading Joyce when I had no idea who he was or what he
thought about or how he was brilliant. I can, I guess, look up stuff, think
on a biographical level about PK, but I prefer not to. The obsessions, for
example, and how these pile up in details, thought linked to thought,
reflections on thought, on how thinking leaps and connects, turns inward
from keen observations, returns to a constant nagging of thoughts about
what seems trivial, petty, stupid, crowded with anxiety, and then, as you
note, the humor, the laugh out loud that explodes from poinant prose, from
pathos, that is, in the final analysis, a triumph of art over the mundane
and ugly ways we make meaning.

The comparison with Joyce, with Woolf even, makes sense to me.

The essay on BE that admits that BE and Woolf's MD are worlds apart, in
character and tone, etc., makes little sense, other than that Oedipa and MD
are struck by a metaphysical and magical sadness that causes them to think
and search or deeper meanings.

P's irony never cuts into the bleeding, never sends us over the edge, as
DFW does with each chapter. These characters are absurd, and sad, and bring
us great pleasure. To quote another modern, we laugh and sing and are
blessed by the dialogue of self and soul.

As a Hemingway reader, I wonder if he chapter with the two Christians
reminded of hills of white elephants?

On Saturday, September 28, 2013, wrote:

> I know everybody's minds are on BE, but  this is wonderful novel, I'm
> reading.  Smart, funny, in its way beautiful.  In a way it's so good that
> it becomes about DFW:  who was this and what was going on in his head?  (People
> probably thought that about Joyce ...
>
> It's very good.  And very funny, in the way that Something Happened is
> funny.
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'fionashnapple at gmail.com');>>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'pynchon-l at waste.org');>>
> Sent: Tue, Sep 24, 2013 3:50 pm
> Subject: Re: The Pale King
>
>
> Reading it.
> On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 8:31 PM, <malignd at aol.com <javascript:_e({},
> 'cvml', 'malignd at aol.com');>> wrote:
>
>> Am currently reading this and I think it's brilliant and amazing.  Anyone
>> else read it?
>
>
>
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