Pynchon's Coast: Inherent Vice and the Twilight of the Spatially Specific

[alice malice]

It's absurd to contrast Pynchon with Dickens on this idea of
characters who move us to tears, just silly. I'm not sure why Pynchon
needs defending on this; he simply doesn't write Victorian novels. Is
that OK? Sure it is. That Pynchon made it big, that Marquez did, that
Rushdie did, that Morrison did, is a very cool thing for those of us
who love literature that is bold and crazy and magical. It doesn't
need defending. It's not the template for a generation of authors that
either backed away from the hysterical or never gave it a try. So
what?  Wood has good arguments, he knows what he's talking about, but
a lot of what he says about the kinds of fictions he admires are
merely based on his preferences.

Part of the problem of defending Pynchon is that he doesn't need it
and part of it is that we don't know what Pynchon is up to with
characters and lots of other stuff. There are a lot of great reads
about there on how Pynchon makes and uses characters, the technique of
characterization, but nothing comprehensive and convincing. Right?

On Sun, Mar 8, 2015 at 6:59 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I suggest that the Cyprian plot, for example what's his name with the
> broken leg, is moving. Yes also to Mason & Dixon's deaths. I think that
> there is real focus on "individual psychology"  in both of those books. But
> poignant deaths and other sufferings may not be the best way to judge
> roundedness.
>
> And I think there are aesthetic reasons out of P's vision besides that nice
> line about " too shopworn ..to treat unironically).
>
> But, although William Logan is a fine reviewer ( and poet) in general, and
> although he is bringing up once again what many see as a touchstone example,
> I do not think it works very well to make the case for rounded characters in
> general, if that is the case being made.
> First: as touchstone that touchstone is Victorian sentimentality. ( if
> Little Nell is a rounded character, the criteria are other ones).
> Second: millions have cried then and recently over deaths in bad--non--art.
> Love Story anyone
> As rounded characterization?
> Third: Scenes such as Little Nell's death are a major reason Dickens took so
> long to be judged " great".
> Fourth: is Gulliver well-rounded? Very Yes, I say but there is no pathos.
> The book, like most of Pynchon is satire, fiercely so ( as w much of
> Pynchon). Has anyone ever cried over a Nathaniel West character? Miss
> Lonelyhearts made me very sad but ???  Tristram Shandy? What does " rounded
> characterization mean in such fiction?
> Fifth: That ' social realism' in fiction has again and again been seen as "
> shopworn" by new artists who argue that it can't be art if it is just like
> the past is another " tradition" by now.
>
> PS I have just read Wood's full-of-praise review of Gilead. Quite an
> unironic novel that I am as stone-hearted over as Oscar Wilde was by the
> death of Little Nell. One of us is wrong.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Mar 7, 2015, at 10:25 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> More re Wood and "roundedness" from former P-lister Bill Millard:
>
> "In certain critical quarters there has long been a characterization problem
> in Pynchon. One reasonable way to put it is William Logan's observation,
> apropos of various excesses in Against the Day, that "no one has ever wept
> over the death of a Pynchon character the way thousands wept over Little
> Nell." Defenders might counter either that his major characters rarely die
> in view of the reader, that Dickensian sentiment is too shopworn an effect
> to treat unironically, or that certain of Pynchon's deaths (without
> hesitation, I would nominate those of Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason) are
> in fact seriously moving. But the objection still stands. Those who seek
> psychological roundedness and credibility above all else in fiction do not
> customarily find it here, certainly not in overprivileged heavies like
> Fenway. Perhaps Pynchon's general refusal of interiority for many characters
> indicates not an inattention to individual psychology or, as James Wood
> would have it, an outright authorial incompetence at the task of
> constructing credible, nuanced, and realistic individual perspective (for
> Wood, arguably the central task of any serious novel). The steady attainment
> of greater self-awareness by Sportello, despite his intellectual and
> cultural limitations and his memory-beclouding inhalations, indicates that
> Pynchon is capable of considerable psychological nuance when he puts his
> mind to it. I would add that on the far larger canvas of Against the Day,
> the extended Cyprian Latewood plot (which arises in mid-novel, too far along
> for the more impatient reader or reviewer even to have noticed it) presents
> a decisive response to Wood's charges of chronic immaturity, superficiality,
> and overtheatricality. But an equally plausible alternative is that Pynchon
> habitually eschews a close focus on individual psychology because of a fully
> serious conviction that it is simply not as interesting as broader social
> systems, either as an intellectual problem or as an aesthetic object."
>
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:49 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> http://www.collegehillreview.com/004/0040501.html
>>
>> Pynchon’s California
>>
>> http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2014-fall/pynchon’s-california.htm
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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