GRGR(5): Pudding & human respect

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

"Bitter and moldy is the 'Poor man's Pudding,' groaned I to myself, half
choked with but one little mouthful of it, which would hardly go down."

"It had yellowish crust all around it, and was rather rankish, I thought to
the taste."

---Melville Poor man's Pudding

Sexual perversions often take the form of ritual. For Pudding, it seems the
ritual functions as expiation for his indifferent participation during WWI.
He has learned nothing, he is "bound by nothing but his need for pain, for
something real, something pure....no it's not guilt here...ministers,
scientists, doctors, each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was
here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body."

Pudding has learned nothing, but how to eat poor man's pudding.

The reversal is grotesque.

Terrance



Mark Wright AIA wrote:

> Howdy:
>
> --- Lorentzen / Nicklaus <lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de> wrote:
>  One of the clearest pleadings for human respect in the whole book.
> > The
> >  clearness of the statement is pointed out by the drama-like style of
> > dialogue.
> >
> >   Why here? Why without ambivalence? Why Pudding?
>
> Pudding has learned something.  Recall that he saw the bond between men
> in the trenches as noble, and retained a capacity for grief and
> empathy, even a poetic sensibility (a la Sasoon?) in the lighted sky
> above no-man's land.  Addlepated as he is, he hopes, as a General to
> shepherd the only the morally pure to their deaths.  He does not want
> the corrupt to die in battle and be damned; he wants his soldiers to
> see paradise.  I think...
>
> Mark
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