GRGR4: Details, Details

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Mark Wright AIA wrote:

> Howdy:
>
>
>       The KKE episode provides data about a central character, and about
> the
> forces arrayed against his well-being, of the uses to which he is put,
> in furtherance of the story. (Such an unfashionable word, story.)
>

What about that central character? Is he a protagonist like Pip? or Jude?
or better yet, Tom Jones? In some ways, yes. He is, as we discussed, a
central character in the tradition Entwicklungsroman in which a protagonist
is followed during the course of maturation and learning. What does
Slothrop learn? What is the war to Slothrop? Slothrop is the mediator of
the novel and as such he is not like Pip or Jude or Tom Jones, he is more a
golem. So, the harp is important, and Jack might have saved it but he's
dead. And Malcolm is dead. So the irony screws its way through a permeable
space/time. Race relations and assassination, war, genocide,  are what
Pynchon is writing about, on one level, it's what he always writes about.

Terrance