Safe Sex is No Fun

[Paul Mackin]

About Pudding dying from E. coli poisoning? 

Do remember something to that effect but can't find it in the book right 
now. Struck me at the time it was meant to be facetious on several levels. 

Medical types on the list please correct me, but aren't fatalities
from E. coli extremely rare? And when they do occur, it wouldn't be
from the practice of coprophagy, would it? Pudding had plenty of the 
little bacilli in his own GI track without any help from Katje's.
Now if Katje had had E. histolytica in her gut, that would have been a
different matter, Pudding being an old guy without much resistence and
all that.

Regardless of Pudding, doesn't this whole line of discussion illustrate
the difficulty of assigning moral value to situations and character's
actions in GR. One minute it'll be life affirming, the next something
else. When Pynchon gets done with it who knows. 

					P.

			
On Sat, 23 Mar 1996, David L. Pelovitz wrote:

> 
> From: Burgess, John <jburgess at usia.gov>
> 
> Richard:
> >>Two questions:  How is Slothrop's sexual activity with Bianca not 
> >>brutal-I mean how old is she?
> >>
> >>2nd question:  Doesn't Pudding die from his "life-affirming" 
> >>appetites? e. coli poisoning?
> 
> >2. As others have noted in their replies to my original on this, for 
> >Pudding, even shit is alive -- for Pudding.  That it propels him back to 
> >a time when he was truly vital, every sense and nerve-ending alive, is, 
> >for him, life affirming.  That it ultimately causes his death (that, at 
> >least, is the supposition of other characters, though not actually stated 
> >as fact) is a side-effect.  But then, I think I can safely say that we 
> >all do/did things that made sense at the time, but didn't, in the long 
> >run.
>  
> But the last we hear of Pudding is at the Gross Suckling party.
> 			
> "Flames are leaping in the pit.  They are not 'sensitive falmes,'
> but if they were they might be able now to detect the presence
> of Brigadier Pudding.  He is now a member of the Counterforce,
> courtesy of Carroll Eventyr.  Courtesy is right.  Seances with
> Pudding are at least as trying as the old Weekly Briefings back
> at "The White visitation."  Pudding has even more of a mouth on
> him than he did alive." (GR, 715)
> 
> Like so many Pynchon characters, it is hard to say Pudding
> died.  Not only does he talk more now, but he's now a 
> member of the Counterforce and maybe even more useful than
> he was when under Pointsman control.  The sexual act which
> "kills" him may have freed him.
> 		
> David Pelovitz - dqp5805 at is.nyu.edu
> 
>