Not sure I Know it when I see it...

[David L. Pelovitz, Ph.D.]

On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, C. Endicott wrote:

> A couple of people have expressed shock that p-listers who claim to
> understand Pynchon could fail to recognize what *they* deem offensive,
> morally wrong, etc. What suprises me is that people who claim to
> understand Pynchon are able to make broad categorical statements about
> what is "wrong" and what is "right";
> my take on Pynchon is that he seeks to point out the danger, or at least
> uselessness, of such a binary approach. 
>

I'd say that's about half true.  Pynchon definitely calls binary 
approaches into question, but relativists don't do much better.
Mexico hates the war and all it represents, yet he claims that
his mother is the war, doesn't remember his life before the war,
recognizes that the war brought him Jessica, and even leaves
his first meeting with Prentice's Counterforce determined to
fight Them and Their War singing, 
"But we're bringing down Their system,
 And it isn't a resistance, it's a war" (640)

It would seem that Mexico ends up embracing that which he hates 
most.  Binary approaches tned to fail to account for the multiple
of possibilities in Pynchon's work, but attempts to embrace
all possibilites tend to reduce themselves to binary structures.
I'd say Pynchon calls both into question.

The cosmic joke often seems to be that no human can understand
all of the univere to which his/her sense of morality is applied,
but no moral code will function universally without that complete
undertstanding.  Pynchon does not give greater authority
to binary absolutists or those who seek the excluded middles.

For my money, he treats those who recognize that their view is limited
and try simply to learn what they can.  Who comes off better,
Franz Pokler, who can trust in cause and effect without seeing the
whole of the movie, or Leni Pokler, who admits that she doesn't
understand how the cosmos relate to life on earth but holds
to the belief that a relation could exist even if it is
beyond her understanding?
	
David Pelovitz - pelovitd at gusun.georgetown.edu