He's Got, Personality!

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

P. observes:
"Benny Profane is a strange mixture of talent (at least in attracting
women) and extreme reticence about displaying himself. The world holds
too many booby traps, and he is too prone to setting them off. Better to
lie low as much as possible.
 
Herbert Stencil is a tireless student of history whose research
methods require "[f]orcible dislocation of personality". Subjectivity
gets in the way. One avoids speaking in the first person. One publishes
anonymously or privately, like Henry Adams with his own novels
and autobiography. (Lying low is a form of anonymity, is it not?)
 
Fausto Maijstral reluctantly (for the benefit of Paola) undertakes an
apologia, an exposure of himself, but quickly sees
the implications of such an act. For complex reasons, explaining
ones self constitutes rejections of previous personalities. It is a price
he willingly pays, but not for frivolous reasons."


And let's not forget the dictum of early Pynchon influence T.S. Eliot--
"Only those who *have* a personality and emotions can know what it is to
want to escape from them!"

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)