Slothrop

[Justin Roby]

Slothrop = Bartleby (Melville)?

Bartleby progresses to a point where he is absolutely still:  has he been
destroyed, or has he won some sort of freedom?

Slothrop's identity seems to have been "magically washed away, along with
most of [his] personality" by the end of GR; does he win that freedom?

Just a couple of questions that place Pynchon in a pretty big pantheon of
authors who write about people who either A) lose their identities
completely, or B) devote their identities to a mad quest.  This includes
Melville, Kafka...  Which one (megalomaniac or hypochondriac, to borrow
Gilles Deleuze's phrasing) is worse, or are they both admirable?  Is it
better to resist openly, or is not resisting at all the most forceful form
of resistance?

Justin Roby
habeeb at earthlink.net
jroby at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
English Ph.D. candidate
http://home.earthlink.net/~habeeb

"You think a man's mind is a pool table?"
                                --Thomas Pynchon