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

[David Morris]

>From: "Seb Thirlway" [snip] What you get is something much more disturbing 
>-
>after x pages of illuminated, ecstatic writing that sweeps you
>along, you suddenly get swept along by the same momentum into a
>subject matter of eating shit, pain, submission, or sex with a
>young boy or girl...and the writing is so well done, so much
>inside the protagonist's thoughts, with just as much lyricism and
>humanity attributed to Pudding, or Blicero, as to Roger Mexico
>for instance, just as much sheer skill and exuberance in
>describing Bianca as Slothrop sees her in the cabin, as in
>putting across Roger's thoughts of Jessica ... that, hooked on
>the prose, you don't _quite_ stop in time.

YES!!!

>There's no moral judgment in these passages, or even
>subsequently - nothing that could be described as Pudding,
>Slothrop or Blicero "getting their just deserts" (though what
>happens when Slothrop returns to the Anubis is horrific, but I
>can't quite work out that connection - I don't think it's an
>obvious pay-back).  And all this bodily fluid stuff never seems
>shabby or deflated either - TRP is having fun, the time of his
>life it seems, writing these parts of the book, making his prose
>as seductive as he knows how to, on purpose I think: exactly so
>as to draw you in, make you forget that what's happening is
>something you might normally think of as wrong, or revolting.
[snip]
>IMO the coprophagy, SM and paedophilia are not "little details",
>but some of the points in GR where TRP really pushes it - too far
>for the Pulitzer judges anyway.  Any "unambiguous moral judgment"
>on these sections has to come from the reader, and TRP does his
>best to make moral judgment difficult.
>

I don't know that difficulty is the goal, but it is the challenge.  
Simplicity is most definityely not the goal.

Thank you, Seb.

D&M

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