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

[rj]

TF
> Also, I think the
> reader must distance himself from Slothrop to make any sense
> of the novel. 

I don't agree with this, and I don't quite know how it would be
possible, particularly at those times when we are privy to Slothrop's
perceptions alone (down the toilet, for example).

> the narrator knows

I don't accept that there is a single narrator in *GR*. In fact, I don't
think that it is possible pinpoint an ultimate narrative agency within
the text.

> But we all know, the narrator knows, and Pynchon makes it
> clear as a bell, humans have certain human rights and to
> violate these, is evil.

We all *believe* this, or something like this, but that is not to say
that we all *agree* on what those rights are, and when or when not they
might apply.

> They were not all evil, some of them were, some Bliceros and
> Pointsmans no doubt, but what they did, and what
> missionaries have done to others, even in the name of
> christ, has often been very evil indeed.

You write "some" and "often", and this is exactly the point. How can we
thus make absolute moral judgements? And further, can there be evil
without intent?

> What is one good thing
> about Pointsman?

He is human. And, at times in the text he is quite humanised I believe:
his squalid room and sperm-smeared sheets make him an object of pity,
for example, as does his furtive encounter in the storeroom with Maudy
Chilkes at Xmas.

> I have to rebut the argument you claim but haven't made? 
 
I believe the argument that "there isn't a vantage beyond the text which
can accommodate" a unified and absolute moral view of the events
narrated in the text has been made and supported with clear and coherent
textual references over many months. The existence of such an
hypothetical (and widely-disputed) viewpoint, on the other hand, has
not.

> What is the difference between
> conditioned and PRE-conditioned?

They are quite probably one and the same. Think of the "pre-" as
emphasising the point that the conditioning has preceded the particular
stimulus and response under question. Or else, pardon my tautology.

> And isn't that last page, where the reader is is sitting in
> that theater a warning, a warning to America in particular?
> Isn't GR an attack on the West? Isn't the Western World,
> more specifically 500 years of Western dominance the target
> of Pynchon's satire?

Yes, as revealed in the novel "America" is simply an extension and
transformation of Western imperialist hegemony. Your questions don't
really dispute my point, however, which was that the "last page of the
novel ... communicates explicitly and directly with the current reader."

best