GRGR (15): Good & Evil (was Enzian...)

[rj]

Paul M (I think)
> > > > Hard to keep one's moral compass from twirling incessantly.

Y'know, standing back, looking at the plot as a whole, I can sort of
envisage it as a compass of sorts on one level. Or, a Rocket mandala,
perhaps. The four sons -- Slothrop (the Westward/erman), Enzian,
Tchitcherine and Gottfried -- all approaching this Holy Centre the
Rocket from their cardinal radii. That it is the Northerner, the
European, who finally seeds the one (the Ultimate Zero in fact) hovering
over all of our heads circa 1974 is an apt touch, but even so the other
three boys were closing in perilously all that time, and would have if
they could have no doubt. And, still will if they can.

> GR employs Comic Book morality 
> lessons which are not insincere, but they do not overide all sorts of other 
> conflicting messages.

Hear hear. Pynchon chides the Sentimental Surrealist in himself often
enough. The sentimentality and optimism in Geli's song (289-290), for
example, aren't played for the cheap laughs that most of the other
lyrics are, but I wouldn't say that it is totally unironic, knowing what
we (and Geli) know about that Tchitcherine.

I think -- and I'm not trying to stir up Dubya Dubya Drei around here
again but I think it's an important point -- I think that there isn't a
single "heart" or "moral center" to this book. I do think it tends
towards a whole lot of p.c. sentiments and interpretations, possibly
some not so p.c. ones as well. But I don't think the point of the novel
is to batter us about the ears with what we already know and believe
(about the Holocaust, and colonialism, and industrialisation, and God,
and whatever), but rather to make us begin thinking for ourselves again
and questioning our preconceptions and not just soaking up all the
propaganda and the pap that the power brokers keep pumping down our
throats. And, in part, this means that as well as the moral lesson of
Pokler's story there is the somewhat ameliorating lesson of the Dora
rampages which precedes it. Yeah, "Human 'Nature'" is the key, I guess,
as David M. sez.

For mine, *GR* constantly exposes Western history and morality as part
of the problem. "The Holocaust" as we perceive it now (or, in 1974) is
all tied up with this history and morality, just as colonialism and
"progress" and mechanisation are. Intolerance, outrage, retaliation,
murder, destruction: these are not useful or "good" responses, whether
in the name of anti-Semitism or in the name of philo-Semitism, are they?
For me, that's the bottom line message of the choices and juxtapositions
Pynchon engineers.

I see in the text an ironicised version of the novel as Bildungsroman,
and I think one of the twists is that as Slothrop is learning so, in
fact, is the reader.

fwiw, best