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

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

jporter wrote:
> 
> Hello Terry. You said:
> 
> >What are you both saying here? In the novel these constitute
> >mere play of the imagination. I might agree with this
> >statement, but I don't know what you are talking about. It's
> >not evil because it's in a novel? OK, I agree with that, if
> >that's it?
> 
> Speaking only for myself here, that's partly it. The novel is very good.
> The characters are complex and for me, it does the work a disservice to
> reduce any of them to "good" or "evil." These conceptual terms may have
> some abstract meaning, but the characters have enough complexity and
> multi-dimensionality to be more than that. Pulling a particular example out
> of the work and testing it for "goodness" or "evility" also, to me, seems a
> disservice to the work as a whole.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> 
> jody


Yes, that helps a lot. I read the novel very differently. In
NO way do I suggest boiling the book down to a simple good
and evil.  I know some think my reading is a disservice or
reductive, but it really isn't.  I too see the complexity
and multidimensionality, but not in the characters. I read
Pynchon's characters as mostly pedants, bigots, cranks,
parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent
professionals of all kinds that are often handled in terms
of their occupational approach to life as distinct from
their social behavior. One of the ways the complexity and
multidimensionality is handled by Pynchon, I think, is by
taking abstract ideas and theories and investing them in
characters, for example Pavlov is obviously invested in
Pointsman. Saying this, I don't contend that my way of
reading GR is best, or even advisable, but I think it is one
approach, one of many, one lots of people share, not many
active on this list, and accept as a good way to read GR.
This approach has plenty to say about the complexity and
multidimensionality of GR. GR has, among other
multiplicities, stylistic multiplicity and the philosophic
pluralism it implies. GR has fantasy, parody and comedy.
These three are essential to GR. Take any chapter and there
they are. GR has philosophy, intellction and encyclopedism,
an 'anti-book' stance, a marginal cultural position, and
carnivalization. In GR, this intellectual structure which is
built up in the story makes for violent dislocations in the
customary logic of narrative. Pynchon seems to be showing
off and careless sometimes, but in fact those silly
limericks and the apparent carelessness that results from
the dislocations are reflected back at the reader or the
reader's tendency to judge by a novel-centered conception of
fiction and the piling up of enormous mass of erudition
about his theme or his overwhelming of his pedantic targets
with an avalanche of their own jargon is all part of his
satire. To me, the YOU is the most interesting,
multidimensional and complex person in GR and the narrators
in GR are more complex, multidimensional and more
interesting than most of the hundreds of characters in the
book. 


Terrance