Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[Michael Perez]

Terrance wrote:
"No matter what we choose to call GR, it is my opinion that
it is not divorced from moral and social issues. To my
reading of all of Pynchon's works, he leaves no doubt in my
mind as to his attitude towards racism, oppressive economic
practices, genocide, police state repression, the treatment
of humans as fetishes, the evils of germany's acts of
violence in Africa---a subject we will read about in the up
coming chapter and many other issues that he is not
ambivalent about."

Later:
"Indeterminacy is a term as loaded as satire. As your
coupling it with 'postmodern' reveals. [snip] The good guys and the bad
guys are not so blurry, perhaps this is something we should discuss. Is
Major Marvy a good guy?  The mindless pleasures that blurrrr everything
in the zone, prevent characters from knowing who is on trial at
Nuremberg and WHY? In GR, sometimes a bad guy asks the most important
ethical questions--Rathanau--and sometimes the soulless bureaucrat
saves a live in a heroic act and then reverts to his soulless
conditioned condition and although Roger is looking for Love in all the
wrong places he is looking, yes Roger is an important guy in this book,
but it is a bad guy that will make the most beautiful statement about
Love in the book. Pynchon is not unique in doing this and this is
not imo, moral indeterminacy."

I certainly don't want to quibble over terms, since I think it seems
that we agree at least that there is some (actually, I think, a good
deal of) blurring.  Perhaps indeterminacy is an inaccurate description
and, yes, probably as loaded a term as satire or postmodern or
morality, for that matter.  Most of what we can gather about Pynchon's
attitude, though, I believe, is simply a matter of knowing ourselves
the difference between good and evil.  No, I don't think Major Marvy is
a good guy, but is Slothrop?  Is Pointsman really a bad guy?  He is
certainly not likable, but is he evil?  And poor Roger?  I agree he is
an important character, but is he good?  Was all the evil of the Nazis
and the real or imagined Cartel(s) inside and outside the text worth
the technological advances, the geopolitical realignment, the social
cohesion (spirit of Dunkirk, don't y'know), the entrance of women into
the workforce en masse, etc.?  Where would we be without Hitler?
[Please, no one should take these two questions TOO seriously] Of
course, we would, I suppose, all answer that we could have done very
nicely without all the atrocities and we could have waited a little
longer for the evolution of air and space travel.  However, some of the
evil was caused by the supposed good guys, too.  No, not equally, of
course, but nevertheless substantially.  Loyalty to goodness does not
necessarily imply party (or national or planetary or racial or
whatever) loyalty.  All empires are evil, aren't they?  That's where
the moral indeterminacy is, I believe, for lack of a better term.  Find
me a better one and I'll salute it.



Michael
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