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

[Doug Millison]

Re Enzian's age, isn't Weissman, in 1944, reminiscing about events that
took place in 1904? At any rate, W refers to him as a "boy" which would
indicate younger than adolescent and certainly no adult.

Peter Petto objected (rightly, in my personal opinion), to  Lorentzen /
Nicklaus' post about "pedophilia with consenting children."

It's worth noting, for those who may have forgotten, that in GR Pynchon
deals rather directly with this issue in Pokler's story, where he shows us
Pokler's fantasy of sex with his willing "daughter" -- then Pynchon pulls
back, quickly establishing that this is only Pokler's fantasy, which Pokler
almost immediately rejects. (Likewise in the Slothrop/Bianca material it's
far from clear if these are events that "really happen" in the novel or
only in Slothrop's fantasy, if I'm remembering correctly; I haven't gotten
that far ahead in my re-reading of the novel this time.) If in GR deviant
sexuality is a way for individuals to regain power from heartless and
manipulative overlords (as some readers have suggested often in the past
and again in GRGR -- not a position I think you can sustain and defend on
close reading of the novel, by the way, although I know some readers appear
to take great comfort in the notion that Pynchon somehow advocates S & M
sex),  a tool the Counterforce can use in opposition to control by Them,
why does Pynchon refrain from letting Pokler get it on with the "daughter"?
At least in part, I think, because if he goes ahead and lets Pokler do the
nasty with the daughter the reader will lose all sympathy with Pokler as a
character, and that would have disastrous effects for the case Pynchon is
making in this central episode of the novel.

My more general point here is that it appears that Pynchon has already
thought through -- and has written circles around -- all of our clumsy
arguments on this issue (as he has regarding so many others). I find it
very interesting that with Pokler, Pynchon takes pains to label the sex act
shocking (through his character's explicit reaction and condemnation),
where in other instances (the scenario that Pointsman has manipulated Katje
and Pudding into performing, for example), Pynchon pulls out all the stops
and lets the scene proceed and reverberate without making any character
intervene with such a moral judgement.

Pynchon is playing deep games with his portrayals of sex, far deeper than
our knee-jerk responses --especially the ill-conceived flame-bait
provocations in this forum that would appear to condone and even encourage
adult sex with children with the flimsy and thoroughly discredited (see
Freud to begin catching up on that thread, a thinker Pynchon appears to
have studied to some important degree) rationalization that the "child"
wants it -- can touch. Sex is where some of Pynchon's most powerful moral
lessons are played out in GR. Pynchon returns to this theme, with a
vengeance, in Vineland and in M&D, a signal, I assume, that it's a topic of
some importance to him in his artistic project, and that he didn't say all
that he wanted to say about it in GR.  Unfortunately in this discussion,
the political content that Pynchon gives to these sex acts is all but
ignored, too.




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