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

jporter jp4321 at idt.net
Mon Dec 13 22:26:37 CST 1999


>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.

Differently than what?  "The novel is a very good book?"

 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.

The inability to recognize the more human aspects of P.'s characterizations
by alot of people early on always struck me as unfortunate, and at times,
made me feel like I was odd (probably am). Iguess I tend to empathize with
the pedants, bigots (to some extent), cranks (a whole lot), parvenus,
virtuosi, and those rapacious and incompetent professionals. Or, at least I
noticed a touch of those things in a whole lot of otherwise regular
Shumans. I also thought the book was hilarious from the get go, when many
friends put it down after a few pages, calling it boring.

 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.

Not really. Although Pointsman could be considered a Pavlovian, which seems
to suit P.'s purposes of having the conditioned stimulus precede the
unconditioned stimulus, until the unconditioned response becomes linked to
the conditioned stimulus (whew), the dogmatic (no pun) approach of Pavlov
was fairly passe by V2 time. Operant Conditioning was much more the rage.
Skinner trained pigeons to sit in torpedoes and peck at screens displaying
the target as their guidance device during WWII. But more to the point,
Pavlov was not really like Pointsman, at all. He was no manipulator. He
stood up to both Lenin and Stalin, rather courageously, and berated them,
in public, no less, condemning the effects of communism on Russian Science
and the Russian Intelligentsia. He certainly had his shortcomings, but he
was no Pointsman.

And I'll see your investment of abstraction and raise you  to Quantum
Gravity. Didn't I already do that a few weeks back? GR is good, but M&D is
spectactular, much more finely crafted and up to date. Suits me better with
my grey hair and all. I whined for an immediate re-reading of M&D before we
started GR, but I was beaten down by the powers that be, who think they're
still young.

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.

No problem with that.

>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.

Not for me. But maybe that's because I was standing on the margins the
first time I picked it up. Fell right into the flow. The dislocations come
when one tries to fit the riffs into some preconceived critical framework,
and reads with one eye and ear on what the critics are saying and the other
on the text itself. That's like looking at Bloat's picture of Slothrop's
map, instead of the map itself: black and white v. color.
You come to the text too prepared with other peoples interpretations. I'm
sure glad I've never read Weisenberger, although I might get a kick out of
it now, after a million slug fests on the P-list. Listen to the
narrator...psst, you can trust him, its pynchon, and he's talking to you...


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

Which reader is that, exactly?


>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.

Or his hook. Alot of us use that jargon day in and out, to put bread on the
table. You'd be surprised how accurate most of it is, and strange, it
doesn't feel all that satirical. Sometimes it's more like a nudge and a
wink.

Sometimes it goes beyond satire, though. Satire, or it's perception can be
last holdout of one afraid to let down their guard and be moved. Awed. But
sometimes the vision is so beautiful, so correct, I've cried.


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

I hope you weren't offended by my using Terry before. It slipped out. Long
lost college friend. Terrance it is then.

Goodnight,

jody






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