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

[rj]

P. Mackin:

> There can be no sense of evil if we cannot accept the
> fictional goings on as REAL.

I think young Paul (along with quite a few others since this a.m.) hits
the nail on the head here. Even if we can agree that Pointy and Weissman
are "evil" they are only fictional characters and thus we cannot make
that jump from fiction to "reality" and say that, ipso facto, all Nazis
or all clinical behaviourists are evil. It's a novel, not a historical
document after all. Of course, we can say, Weissmann is a Nazi so he
must be evil, Pointsman a mad scientist likewise, and so we can rest
easy, comforted by the fact that we know precisely who the good guys and
the bad guys are by the hats they wear. And even if this doesn't quite
gel with the narrative, well, it's only a story after all and no reason
to lose any sleep over *that*, is there?

But I contend that there is a very palpable reality within the
"fictional goings on" in the novel. The precise documentation, the
minutia and pieces of trivia checked and cross-checked, the avoidance of
anachronism; each bears witness to the realist aspiration of Pynchon's
text. And, within these historically-plausible, verifiable, panoramas
and stage-sets, Pynchon's fictional scenarios play out like little
perverse morality plays which question and challenge and reverse what we
traditionally have come to regard as "good" and "evil" by virtue of the
morality plays played out in the history books and ideologies on which
we have been nurtured, and by which we have become (pre)conditioned. 

Pointsman now, is motivated by selfish and self-indulgent ends,
certainly. He wants to emulate Pavlov, vainly coveting the Prize his
mentor and messiah was awarded at the beginning of the century. But
despite all of the depravities, and his absolute insensitivity to the
cruelty which his experiments and manouevring entails, his ultimate
mission, what he desperately wants and hopes to achieve in the name of
Science, is surely commensurate with all that is noble and virtuous in
that calling, isn't it? (Or, we ask ourselves: Was Pavlov also "evil"?
Was he too driven by ambition, or lust for glory, like this character?
Would he, given the opportunity, have used one living human cortex in
his experiments? Did he, secretly, perhaps even do so?)

But Pointsman c. 1944-5 is also a "British" scientist, employed by the
Allied authorities, ostensibly, I think, to predict where the bombs will
fall and by so doing halt the carnage and death that they are causing.
If he had succeeded in this then he would have been lauded as a hero,
legitimately so, and not a "war criminal" at all. Wouldn't he? No matter
what despicable inhumanities went on in his laboratory the War with the
dogs or Slothrop or Pudding he might very well have received that Prize
he so covets, mightn't he? (And, in his job he surely mirrors Wernher
von Braun, a quote from whom provides the opening motto for the novel.
He has to, in effect, "catch" the bombs von Braun has thrown. They are
like "pitcher" and "catcher" in some terrifying global ballpark. Like
all ball games though, it is one which is beyond their control, beyond
the control of any single human agency, and quite probably out of
control. Was von Braun "evil"? The American govt. certainly didn't think
so, fêting him after the war and gleefully welcoming him into hearth and
home.)

Does the end *ever* justify the means?

Like Pointy, throughout the narrative Weissman is just doing his job as
an officer of the Wehrmacht. But, for him personally it is not
anti-Semitism or Aryan suprematism or Satanic megalomania which compels:
it is that Rilke, the Aesthetic sublime, which drives him on. Can you
truly say that the narrative discloses "evil" intent even once in
anything Weissmann says or thinks or even does? Isn't he just as sold on
suicide as all the rest, a sad, pathetic old man by the novel's close?

But, for all that, I don't endorse at all Paul's conclusion that
> Pynchon is not the place to exercise one's good and evil receptors
...  In fact, I think it is quite the opposite of this. It's where we
get to sharpen these receptors, or, where we realise we've been had,
duped, conditioned all along, *just* like Slothrop. Just do what that
Chiquita Banana tells you, there's a good boy. It isn't just a jolly
lark where we simply suspend our moral sensibilities altogether and
languish in the Bacchanalian decky-dance of it all, where we gratify our
own deepest subliminal urges and smirk into our Brandy Alexanders about
how deliciously wicked it is to let political correctness go hang for
once -- "Hey, someone's thrown Shirley Temple over the side of the good
ship Anubis ... But h-hell, that's no reason to stop the conga line.
Play on." Yuk. 

No, it's like Seb said:

> 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,

and so forth.

best