M & D Deep Duck continues.

Fri Jan 16 08:40:10 CST 2015

Monte ramps it up again:
"Per my recent mini-rant on the WASTE FB group, I like and respect
Forster, and Aspects of the Novel, and the "flat vs. rounded
characters" passage, and the Great Tradition-ish context of them all.
But that should never have been degraded into the simple-minded
Kakutani scale, by which Roundedness is All, and poor Tom Pynchon --
previously limited to cartoons and caricatures -- finally started to
get it right with Mason and Dixon.'

Agree, have long agreed. This Roundedness is All is a decline, imo, a
singling up, from the variety of modernisms' ways. One can see why it
is the default of reviewers and some critics who think they must be
speaking to readers who do not like 'novels of ideas', "intellectual
fictions"--I am particularly ironically fond of the recent reductive
meme of so many--LIKEABLE characters --instead of fiction purposely
not doing that.

a postmodern arguer, Lyotard, I think does say that such 'realism' is
one of the strands of postmodernity.

on my first full reading of M & D, not understanding that much but
knowing that much, much of the meaning was happening in all of those
side scenes, did NOT find P's M & D so much different from the
characters in his earlier books. Either they had more
roundedness---Molly Hite declaring emphatically---I knew The Whole
Sick Crew in real life---or M & D did NOT have as much as
the reviewers' meme believed. Since M & D were modeled on Real People
then....well-rounded reality of character. But as we are seeing, P's
take is beyond their reality a lot.

But, other other hand, as I told a few non-Plist friends about this
read, one wrote me how he cried at a couple
M & D scenes, and never had at the first three novels (did not read
Vineland). so, another reader heard from.

On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 9:01 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I remember an end-of-semester lecture by Chaucer honcho D.W. Robertson Jr.
> He summarized all the conventional wisdom about the "flatness" of the
> Canterbury characters -- their appearance, words, and actions dictated by
> one dominant trait. He noted the implication of wondrous progress since:
> that authors have learned to capture so much more of human complexity and
> variety, those last assumed to be eternal.
>
> Then he turned it all on its head (my paraphrase): "I'm not saying that it
> is or that it isn't -- but just for exercise, consider the possibility that
> Chaucer was very skilled at understanding and representing... that *that's
> how people were in the 14th century*... that some or much of what we usually
> think of as progress in literary technique since then might actually be
> changes in us... and that literature may have been as much cause as
> reflection of that change."
>
> Credit it to Luther per Van Den Berg, to Shakespeare per Bloom, to Burton as
> transition from pre-modern Melancholick and other humors to proto-modern
> psychology... or go farther with Julian Jaynes
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind
>
> and say that  consciousness itself is only about 3000 years old. I don't buy
> any of them (or Robertson) 100%, but they are *very* useful exercises.
>
> Per my recent mini-rant on the WASTE FB group, I like and respect Forster,
> and Aspects of the Novel, and the "flat vs. rounded characters" passage, and
> the Great Tradition-ish context of them all. But that should never have been
> degraded into the simple-minded Kakutani scale, by which Roundedness is All,
> and poor Tom Pynchon -- previously limited to cartoons and caricatures --
> finally started to get it right with Mason and Dixon.
>
> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 7:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I say there are, fer sure, or there is such a variety in the manifestation
>> of
>> all of its effects, Pynchon wants to make sure we understand that, get
>> that in some
>> mannered but still phenomenological detail.
>> As remarked, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was published again and again
>> in
>> three volumes.
>> If finding the prosaic nomenclature for our feelings is something that
>> happened in human history---
>> then Pynchon is modeling that in some way in M & D?
>>
>> a Dutch psychiatrist, J. H Van Den Berg, in his most famous book
>> places the start of our 'inner self'
>> at around 1520, with Luther's challenge to the Church. Harold Bloom
>> has famously argued that
>> Shakespeare created (our current understanding) of the human in the
>> humanly insightful genius
>> of how work.
>>
>> We can argue that---and I'm sure some will--but I am only throwing
>> these out as a postscript
>> to The Anatomy of Melancholy...i.e as a perspective on the
>> developmental understanding of
>> many of the qualities of being "human". Grief provides us--at
>> least--some insight?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:32 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Can there be different forms of grief?
>> >
>> >
>> > Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> >
>> >> On Jan 16, 2015, at 12:08 AM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I agree (nicely said), but I disagree.
>> >>
>> >> Two sides of the same something, seems to me.
>> >>
>> >> Grief, like fear, makes one desperate to flee oneself.
>> >> Pitch into the hour, so to speak...
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 8:59 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Nicely said.
>> >>>> On Jan 15, 2015, at 7:58 PM, alice malice wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> C.S Lewis may be right, but grief is not like fear to me.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I have fear of grief. To me grief is not like fear. It is the end of
>> >>>> fear; there is nothing left to fear because what was feared is. Maybe
>> >>>> Mason, like Margaret, is not afraid, but is grieving not for what he
>> >>>> fears, or even for what may or may not be, but for what is surely to
>> >>>> be and not to be.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173665
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 6:21 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> >>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>> p20. 'pitching into the hour, heedless"...why does Grief cause this?
>> >>>>> "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."---C.S. Lewis.
>> >>>>> TRP even has Dixon share, therefore understand by identifying with,
>> >>>>> this feeling.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> a lot of anatomy of grief, melancholy, etc. going on from the
>> >>>>> get-go.
>> >>>>> Dense web of feelings.
>> >>>>> -
>> >>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >>>> -
>> >>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >>>
>> >>> -
>> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >>
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l