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

[Seb Thirlway]

From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>


[snip]
>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),

It may not be defensible on close reading, agreed, but it's at
least an intriguing idea that spins off from reading GR.

  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.


I'm not so sure this is a fantasy, though I probably haven't read
this passage as recently as you have.  but agree that there's no
way Pynchon is simply hammering out a simple message "deviant sex
will make you free" throughout the novel - as you say it's more
complicated than that.

>
>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

"written circles around" - like that!  GR is much more than our
clumsy arguments, but the arguments even if clumsy are
interesting to read and get into.

[snip]
>
>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.

Not wanting to make myself flame-bait as well, but isn't what
people are referring to a simple fact, rather than a
justification?  i.e. it just does happen that a child-abuser will
think the child "wants it" - whether that's rationalisation post
factum or misinterpretation, whether the child might even agree
(under duress, perhaps) - these are just facts of child abuse,
which in no way justify it.  OK so the thought-processes of
child-abusers are hardly a comfortable subject, but I really
don't think anything I've read on the list looks like an attempt
to morally justify child-abuse.  In an other way: there's all
kinds of interesting things to be said about how a child-abuser
thinks, how right or wrong things appear _to him_, while holding
firmly onto the conviction that, to us (and we hope, to everyone
else) child abuse is wrong.

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.
>

Political content?  what do you mean?  sounds intriguing, say
more please!



seb