M&D Chapter 12 - pages 118-119

Sat Feb 28 13:14:15 CST 2015

OK, revise my earlier "F & L knew very well" to "F & L had to wear elitist
blindfolds, ideological earplugs, and double-thick woolly theoretical
mittens *not* to know very well that Dickens was a great innovative
creator."

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Monte writes: But notice the special pleading Wood has to do w/r/t
> Dickens -- Micawber as caricature who makes us feel -- and think of
> all the other great pre- or proto- or flatly non-realist caricatures
> (in Cervantes, in Rabelais, in Voltaire, in Fielding, in Sterne, in
> Dumas, in Hugo, in Twain... the list goes on and on) that he would
> have to argue around if he made his premises explicit. ...Game Set
> Match to Davis over Wood.
>
> I will say: Forster and Leavis THEN did NOT believe he was a creative
> innovator but ONLY a melodramatic entertainer...THAT word I do think I
> remember Leavis using. ...Wood should know 'better' but he must not
> quite believe it.
>
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Point taken. But notice the special pleading Wood has to do w/r/t
> Dickens --
> > Micawber as caricature who makes us feel -- and think of all the other
> great
> > pre- or proto- or flatly non-realist caricatures (in Cervantes, in
> Rabelais,
> > in Voltaire, in Fielding, in Sterne, in Dumas, in Hugo, in Twain... the
> list
> > goes on and on) that he would have to argue around if he made his
> premises
> > explicit.
> >
> > It's not coincidental that Forster and Leavis both had to tap-dance a lot
> > when it came to Dickens: like Wood, they knew very well that he wasn't
> just
> > hugely popular and hugely influential, but a great innovative creator...
> one
> > who didn't just awkwardly stretch the value schemata they were building,
> but
> > threatened to blow it wide open.
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I might say: Round about Sometime (shortly after 1910, Woolf's Year of
> >> Human Nature change), reality changed. Again.
> >>
> >> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > Becky, your reference tent me back to re-read for the fifth or sixth
> >> > time
> >> > Wood's 2001 "Human, All Too Inhuman" (the "hysterical realism" review
> of
> >> > Zadie Smith's White Teeth). I'm finally getting a handle on what has
> >> > bothered me about it all along. A sample follows, although I commend
> the
> >> > entire piece to anyone who hasn't read it (or re-read it lately in the
> >> > context of M&D)
> >> > http://www.newrepublic.com/article/61361/human-all-too-inhuman
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > "A genre is hardening...
> >> >
> >> > The big contemporary novel is a perpetual-motion machine that appears
> to
> >> > have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish
> >> > stillness,
> >> > as if ashamed of silence--as it were, a criminal running endless
> charity
> >> > marathons. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, as these
> novels
> >> > continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this
> >> > culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all
> >> > costs.
> >> > Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are
> concerned...
> >> >
> >> > ...Recent novels--veritable relics of St. Vitus--by Rushdie, Pynchon,
> >> > DeLillo,
> >> > Foster Wallace, and others, have featured a great rock musician who,
> >> > when
> >> > born, began immediately to play air guitar in his crib (Rushdie); a
> >> > talking
> >> > dog, a mechanical duck, a giant octagonal cheese, and two clocks
> having
> >> > a
> >> > conversation (Pynchon); a nun called Sister Edgar who is obsessed with
> >> > germs
> >> > and who may be a reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover, and a conceptual
> >> > artist
> >> > painting retired B-52 bombers in the New Mexico desert (DeLillo); a
> >> > terrorist group devoted to the liberation of Quebec called the
> >> > Wheelchair
> >> > Assassins, and a film so compelling that anyone who sees it dies
> (Foster
> >> > Wallace). Zadie Smith's novel features, among other things: a
> terrorist
> >> > Islamic group based in North London with a silly acronym (kevin), an
> >> > animal-rights group called fate, a Jewish scientist who is genetically
> >> > engineering a mouse, a woman born during an earthquake in Kingston,
> >> > Jamaica,
> >> > in 1907; a group of Jehovah's Witnesses who think that the world is
> >> > ending
> >> > on December 31, 1992; and twins, one in Bangladesh and one in London,
> >> > who
> >> > both break their noses at about the same time.
> >> >
> >> > This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. Storytelling
> has
> >> > become a kind of grammar in these novels; it is how they structure and
> >> > drive
> >> > themselves on. The conventions of realism are not being abolished but,
> >> > on
> >> > the contrary, exhausted, and overworked. Appropriately, then,
> objections
> >> > are
> >> > not made at the level of verisimilitude, but at the level of morality:
> >> > this
> >> > style of writing is not to be faulted because it lacks reality--the
> >> > usual
> >> > charge against botched realism--but because it seems evasive of
> reality
> >> > while
> >> > borrowing from realism itself. It is not a cock-up, but a cover-up..."
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> >
> >> > I respect and admire Wood greatly as one of the best critics of our
> time
> >> > (even at book-review depth, or rather enforced shallowness). I think
> >> > he's
> >> > entirely right in tracing much of the fiction he's talking about,
> >> > directly
> >> > or indirectly, to Dickens: he quotes E.M. Forster on Dickens'
> >> > "caricatures"
> >> > from the "flat and round characters" passage in Aspects of the Novel,
> >> > which
> >> > also comes up often here on the P-list:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/file/download/b3babc90fd75d98bc0147d086ad3068f6aeced8b2f8b089e9d5a4036700810c5
> .
> >> >
> >> > What I noticed much more this time around was Woods'strongly (but
> >> > usually
> >> > implied, tacit) *normative* stance. Literary realism of the
> >> > non-hysterical
> >> > kind is not simply credited but *identified*  with engaging reality...
> >> > with
> >> > the capability of expressing tragedy or anguish... with real human
> >> > experience, real human connection... with life, with depth... in
> short,
> >> > with
> >> > almost every Good Thing one could want from narrative art. Well,
> jeez...
> >> > who
> >> > wouldn't want all those those?
> >> >
> >> > But, jeez... do I really believe that the realist novel -- more
> >> > specifically, novels broadly descended from  the 19th-century English
> >> > core
> >> > (Austen, Eliot, James, Conrad) identified as "The Great Tradition" by
> F.
> >> > R.
> >> > Leavis -- is now and forever the only, or the best, way to get them?
> >> > Nope.
> >> > The label "realism" has always been a lousy one, quietly implying vast
> >> > philosophical claims. Writers were getting at trad=gedy, connection,
> >> > depth
> >> > and All That (and at other aspects of experience that character- and
> >> > relationship- and individual-consciousness-centered realist novels
> >> > *don't*
> >> > get at very well) long before realism developed, and have been doing
> so
> >> > right through the realist reign. They aren't "exhausting" or
> >> > "overworking"
> >> > or "evading" anything -- they're doing something else. And often
> enough,
> >> > in
> >> > ways that matter to me,  something more.
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> >
> >> > PS - Encountered along the way, an article on the novel that reminds
> us
> >> > of
> >> > its, uh, parochial origins and probable transience:
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2015/marapr/novel-as-protestant-art.html
> >> >
> >> > If you can't keep all those murderous Near Eastern sects straight and
> >> > prefer
> >> > to Weberize the title as "The Novel as Post- Enlightenment
> >> > Fast-Urbanizing
> >> > Individualist Commercial/Industrial/Capitalist Art", that works too.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Another day,  another couple pages:
> >> >>
> >> >> Maskalyne likens St. Helena to a gothic novel and says
> >> >>
> >> >> "Six months I've been here - too many idle Minutes soon pile up,
> topple
> >> >> and overwhelm the Healthiest Mind."
> >> >>
> >> >> (A little foreshadowing there? -  Suspicions that Mason might go
> >> >> completely mad?  Pynchon doesn't really go in for a lot of
> >> >> foreshadowing to
> >> >> keep up suspense or whatever - just as well,  it would take the whole
> >> >> thing
> >> >> overboard, overdone, too much.)
> >> >>
> >> >> ** "Sirius Business," cackles the Proprietor. -  another groaner gag.
> >> >>
> >> >> This novel has some very serious themes, but told with a LOT of
> humor -
> >> >> not just humor to lighten the atmosphere -there's actually a comic
> >> >> tone.
> >> >>
> >> >> "But I also noticed that the book's  (M&D's) humor was more
> thoroughly
> >> >> interwoven with melancholy and a sense of mortality than ever before
> in
> >> >> Pynchon's work."
> >> >>
> http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/essays/pynchon/mason.html
> >> >>
> >> >> "Mason & Dixon represents an impulse to write history through the
> >> >> imaginary field, to crosshatch its narrative with a realization of
> >> >> culture's
> >> >> desire to find its identity in the realm of the imagination. It thus
> >> >> argues,
> >> >> implicitly, for the importance of artistic imagination alongside
> >> >> scientific
> >> >> and historical work. Pynchon rejects the harsh realism and more
> cynical
> >> >> parodies employed by many contemporary authors, using HUMOR (my caps)
> >> >> and
> >> >> even magic as modes of transformation.[17] Talking dogs, sexually
> >> >> aroused
> >> >> mechanical ducks, and nighttime apparitions and ghosts haunt Mason
> and
> >> >> Dixon
> >> >> in America; perhaps the country that combines technical invention
> with
> >> >> capitalistic enterprise might be equallymythologic in Pynchon's
> >> >> ambivalent
> >> >> history."
> >> >> http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.903/14.1burns.html
> >> >>
> >> >> Thoughts on the humor and how it adds to the mix of history, themes,
> >> >> story, whatever -  do you laugh? Why?
> >> >>
> >> >> **********
> >> >> And then, ta-da - it's Maskelyne's birthday - (which would tell us
> it's
> >> >> October 6, 1761 and that he's 29 years old - born Oct. 1732) and he
> >> >> makes a
> >> >> big deal of impending doom (age 30 is coming).
> >> >>
> >> >> The phrase "Stygian mists"  is from "To Chloris"  in "Madrigals and
> >> >> Epigrams" by William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649) Scottish
> poet.
> >> >> a
> >> >> little chunk of the poem -  http://www.bartleby.com/337/285.html
> >> >>
> >> >> Mason:  (but 30 is)  "... a Number divisible,- penetrable! - by 6
> >> >> numbers!"
> >> >> (eeks?  why?  - numerology of some kind I guess.)
> >> >>
> >> >> ***  Narrator:    "...dismal apostrophes..."    -
> >> >>  And in this case the word apostrophe means exclamations,  not the
> >> >> punctuation symbol.
> >> >>
> >> >> **** Now Dixon is leaving for South Africa to take care of
> Maskelyne's
> >> >> "Sisson instrument"  which is probably a quadrant of some sort,  a
> >> >> device
> >> >> for measuring angles.
> >> >>
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Sisson
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodolite
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrant_(instrument)
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mural_instrument
> >> >>
> >> >>         If the measurement device is off by a hair - then that slight
> >> >> error is multiplied exponentially and Maskelyne has invested more
> than
> >> >> time
> >> >> and his career in the instrument ($$?) .  Dixon is the field rep for
> >> >> Johnny
> >> >> Bird's instruments?  -  lol - but ...
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bird_(astronomer)
> >> >>
> >> >> Why are the various measurements of time and space inaccurate?
>  Errors
> >> >> in
> >> >> measurement - 1.  human error - the time of the Transit (because M&D
> >> >> started/ stopped at different places) and, 2.  device error (plumb
> line
> >> >> screwed up on quadrant).
> >> >> **********
> >> >> Is there really so little on these two pages?    Or is this "so
> >> >> little?"
> >> >>
> >> >> So here's an added little morsel for the Learn'd Dogs amongst us -
> >> >> James
> >> >> Wood, in a now "classic" essay soundly criticized Zadie Smith's White
> >> >> Teeth
> >> >> for it's "hysterical realism" and lambasted a few others in the
> process
> >> >> (M&D, etc).
> >> >> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/61361/human-all-too-inhuman
> >> >>
> >> >> And this is a rather interesting little Wiki article on the subject:
> >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_realism
> >> >> (interesting little piece)
> >> >>
> >> >> Becky
> >> >> the humor bit reminded me of hysterical and that took me on the
> little
> >> >> semi-side trip to Wood and Wiki -
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> -
> >> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >> >
> >> >
> >
> >
>
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