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

[Michael Perez]

Doug wrote:
"Ambiguity about the Holocaust, the evil that was done to these people
by the Nazis?  No, not in the morality that GR lays out, showing us
what
is Good and what is Evil in the world of this novel."

I truly don't believe that the books "lays out" morality or shows us
directly what is good or evil or, more particularly who or which side
is good or evil.  We all know what side we are on going into the book. 
This is a blessing and a curse.  We know who to root for, but the book
does anything but make us feel comfortable about that after a bit. 
It's not so much the "bad guys" are good, but that the "good guys" are
so uncharacteristically BAD.  It has the effect, on me, at least, of
attacking those preconceived notions just enough to question them.  I
mentioned in an earlier post the big three evils of the "good guys" -
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden - GR gives us even more fictional
instances of evil that could have escaped the world's watchful eye. 
Then there's the beginning of the Cold War - no good guys there - and
the war that was going on during the writing of the book, which, at
least, affected the way that it was written.

In answer to my question:  "Is there such a thing as 'Nature's cycle of
eternal return/rebirth'?"
Doug wrote:
"In the world that Pynchon creates for us in GR, yes there is such a
thing.  A narrator talks about it at length, and makes some clear-cut
moral judgments, in Pokler's story."

There are certainly characters whose mythology is centered around this
sort of psychic archetype, but that GR treats this as a part of nature
is not clear to me.  In addition, Weisenburger does point out the ways
in which major events in the war itself occurred on significant days of
the liturgical calendar of christian mythology, but it is not clear
that it has any special significance in the fictional world aside from
the participation (or lack of it) in traditional celebrations of some
of the characters.  When it comes time to talk about Pokler's story in
mid-January (I forget who's hosting), perhaps you can cite some of
these "clear-cut moral judgments."  For now, it might not be such a
good idea to get too heavily into that discussion, I suppose.  However,
I will say that I do not see these as clearly as you do.

Later, Doug wrote:
"I'm afraid that the attempt to deconstruct GR and fit Pynchon's novel
into a post-modern box may blind some readers to the fierce moral
judgments that in fact punctuate this work."

I am hardly a spokesperson for postmodernism or deconstruction and I am
certainly going to attempt to aid in cramming so vast a book into any
sort of box, but I do not see these "fierce moral judgments."  Your
reading seems to be a bit more active than mine has been this time
around.  The book does portray what I would personally call evil, but I
believe the portrayal is far from being judgmental.  As I've said
before, the great majority is treated sort of matter-of-factly,
surrounded by the evil of all sides.  It is not necessarily a cure for
Manicheanism, but the Germans are not the only evil ones.  Just as in
the Cold War or the Korean and Vietnam Wars (the hot wars), the
American empire did not necessarily represent goodness.


Michael

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