GRGR (15): Good & Evil (with M&D bits)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Seb Thirlway wrote:
> 
> >Good discussion. I've got another question however. What would
> the result
> >be if we changed the subject of the thread from "Good & Evil" to
> >"Pleasure & Pain?"
> 
> Much easier to talk about, I think; less risk of being smacked on
> the head with an ad absurdum argument invoking REAL child abuse
> or the REAL Holocaust.
> 
> Evil and good are such theological and philosophical
> >notions. Pleasure and pain are more down to earth. So, under the
> >new scheme MORALITY would consist in trying to promote pleasure
> and
> >trying to prevent pain (an optimizing problem, but no matter).
> 
> what would this morality have to say about Slothrop, or Mason
> with (SPOILER - is being coy about M&D still necessary, by the
> way or has everyone read it?) his melancholy obsession with
> Rebekah?  Not about their actions, but about what to do towards
> them - how would you prevent their pain, and should you?  Just
> imagining how Dixon would cope with Slothrop, as an idle fantasy.
> Probably get on very well, tho' Dixon might have some hard
> thinking to do when he smoaked that what he does out of eager
> Curiosity Slothrop does in the grip of Obsession... (sorry
> couldn't resist it).

Or how would would Slothrop deal with Mason's pain. As you
say, nothing may have happened to Slothrop, perhaps he is
only conditioned or being conditioned to think that
something happened, that would be enough to cause great pain
and anxiety. Did his parents sell him for a Harvard sheep
skin? Is he only subImipolex? Mason's suffering suffers us
all to suffer. Cherrycoke visits or Mason visits him on a
daily basis, perhaps he needs to feel the pain, the pleasure
of remembrance. Perhaps this is one of the reasons,
something broken, something spilled out, that keeps him
there telling us the story. Of course he must entertain or
be sent out in the cold, alone. Slothrop too, knows death,
but for example, when Slothrop learns of  Mucker-Maffick's
death he suspects it is part of conspiracy. I think Slothrop
may have gotten along with Gershom, though. 

 
>  Thus I
> >would I have to rephrase my previously expressed contention as
> follow: In
> >reading _Gravity's Rainbow_ I do not  find myself really
> BELIEVING very
> >firmly in the PAIN that is purportedly taking place. And the way
> I KNOW I
> >do not believe in the pain is that I never find myself WANTING
> IT TO STOP.
> 
> Yes!  I think the confusion and the pain that goes with that is
> more affecting in GR than the instances where pain and
> degradation is actually described, the bits where you could stand
> back and think "well I wouldn't want to be there" - be Gottfried
> or Katje in Blicero's house in Duindigt, for instance.  You don't
> want it to stop because they don't want it to stop, or at least
> they're not sure. 

All three of these characters have different "they don't
want to stop" and "their not sure." Each has a different
role, each a different relationship to Blicero. 

 The only person I can think of who is
> unequivocally in pain and wants out of it is Roger Mexico -
> because he's "boyish", innocent, I can't remember the exact
> description in those terms: he hasn't bought into the War or had
> it buy into him, so, fool, he's still childish enough to feel
> pain absolutely.

Pointsman and Roger and Jessica, I think Pointy with his
foot in a toilet bowl and Roger headfirst into the Pram
where the dog has been, while Jessica talks of her Beaver,
tells us a lot. A toilet bowl for Pointy, how appropriate. A
Pram for Roger, again, how appropriate. Jessica can't
understand Roger's math, this is kinda ironic since Roger
still believes at this point in the novel that the rocket
strikes are indeed a matter of chance, he wants so much to
live and appreciate the random beauty of life.   Painful
experiences for sure, such innocence and all the ideas that
Roger represents, love, most importantly, I think, are
absolutely painful for those that feel pain absolutely.
Perhaps I am too old to root for Roger, but I always liked
long shots and underdogs. Besides, Jessica is so much more
than Beaver's lover to Roger, she is "the very real magic
data he can't argue away" and she is  "other living things,
birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of
simple peace, all gather in what she is to him. Was. He's
losing a full range of life, of being for the first time at
ease in the Creation." Kinda like being in  love with the
wrong person, a person who doesn't share your love, well
maybe that's innocent love, but for Roger, at that moment,
"The effort it takes to extend any further is more than he
can make alone." I like that idea, maybe again I am too old
to be such a fool, but I am too young to entertain with
stories like old Cherrycoke and I think there is no pain
more painful than being in pain alone. 


> The others - Katje, Slothrop, Gottfried, are much too opaque to
> accept empathy as Roger would - they're so compromised (this
> isn't a judgment from outside: they're compromised and they know
> it, or perhaps they're compromised because they know it, or
> perhaps merely suspecting it is enough - maybe nothing was DONE
> to Slothrop, maybe all They had to do was to introduce him to the
> suspicion that something may have been DONE to him) that they
> can't even feel pain wholeheartedly.
> - Maybe it isn't pain, maybe I like it, maybe it's all I'm going
> to get, maybe my categories of pain and pleasure have been
> subverted, secretly in the past or imperceptibly more recently,
> maybe the notion of authentic pleasure and pain that is truly
> mine is an empty notion by now, if that's a possibility then I'm
> not going to identify myself too closely as this person in pain.
> I find this much more painful to read about than the pain
> itself - as you say, you don't believe in the pain, but it's
> still there.  Your morality of trying to prevent pain can do
> absolutely nothing in this situation, without being rebuffed -
> like Dixon (M&D SPOIL again) goodheartedly hurting Mason by
> accident, again and again.  There's very little room for Dixon's
> kindness because Mason is never sure either why he's miserable,
> whether he's miserable, what Rebekah has to do with it.
> Empathising with these characters, wanting their pain to stop,
> would be to be a blundering, ignorant, tactless sentimentalist,
> foolish and naive enough to believe that the "ache in the skin"
> can penetrate at all into a realm you know nothing of and can
> never understand fully - if they still don't know whether they're
> in pain, who the hell do you the reader think you are offering
> sympathy?
> 
> "He is suddenly, dodderer and ass, taken by an ache in his
> skin, a simple love for them both that asks nothing but
> their safety, and that he'll always manage to describe as
> something else--"concern," you know, "fondness...."  (thank you
> Terrance for this quote)
> 
> which feels shameful to Prentice, an emotion that has no place -
> and to the reader as well.  Am I getting ahead of the GRGR, or
> have we got to Prentice reaching his destination, with the taffy
> and the endless corridors? - all about exactly this among other
> things IMO, and truly horrible.
> 
> just my reading...or rather memory of reading - just bought copy
> no.8, keep on lending them out and never get them back.  No
> Return.
> 
> seb