Prosthetic Paradise(2) Enfetishment&MS

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Michael Perez wrote:
> 
> 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


All empires are equal, does it follow from this statement
(let's assume its true) that there is moral indeterminacy?
What does Enzian say, "Perhaps it's theatre, but they Seem
no longer to be allies..." What does he mean? And what does
it mean that he says or thinks this? GR.326

 I am not prepared to discuss Slothrop's black, white of
gray hats, just yet, perhaps his hats are like those horses
in the Wizard of OZ that change color--a horse of a
different color? but in an event, I'm not ready to deal with
Slothrop just now. 

Pointsman I have discussed here, and Yes, to my reading he
is a bad guy--a white hat. Roger is good, he knows the war
is evil and he wants Love. Pointy (not a good guy, I agree
with rj that as a Pavlovian his interest is in people, but
he wants to control them, "his one fox", "his perfect
mechanism" and he will cut that less than human sick
American's skull open to win a nobel prize and what does he
do to old man Pudding so that he may fund his Laboratory,
and like Brock Vond, he's a short eye--that's what they call
it in Elmira--and remember he will separate Roger from
Jessica, and even though that relationship may not have
worked out for young Roger, he believes in Love and in my
humble opinion, he is good, not perfect, he grows, he is
perhaps too young, the War too much his Mother, Beaver too
much the War, but Roger at least wants to Love still, Love
is possible, perhaps a miracle, magic that doesn't always
work, or when it does we can not know, as Slothrop can't
always know that the great shadow of his middle finger, his
"Fuck You" Marvy and all your horrid crew, works, but
doesn't the possibility render some sort of good in a text
that subordinates its component texts 

(the complexity here is incredible but not indeterminate
imho, perhaps I am a fool, but I agree with Eddins here rj,
and I find Kharpertain's "A Hand to the Turn the Time" an
excellent book, even though, in the battle of the books in
Pynchon scholarship, he  disagrees with Medleson) 

of bureaucratic papers and rockets and, in subsuming their
mechanical interests (the business of the War, of Pointy's
Laboratory), allows that Not "everything is permitted"? 
Isn't it possible, that the belief in the efficacy of
spells, of the scent of bananas, in "lovable but scattered
brained mother Nature", in LOVE, counters the apocalyptic
song of cynicism, "Now everybody--."    

As to Satire, throw it out, Edward Mendelson says GR is an
Encyclopedic Narrative, and I think his approach one of the
best around. 

As to evil, what are we to do with Blicero, isn't he a BAD
guy? If you have Eddins' "Gnostic Pynchon" take a look at
chapter 5, if you don't have time, read from 139 "Rocket" to
the end of the book, I will post part of it if anyone cares
to read it. It's tough stuff, but wonderful. 

I am not trying to impose any particular approach, method,
idea, term, school, and so on, I find the best of what has
been written about Pynchon's beautiful books right here on
P-L, where the medium makes the dialogue difficult, but at
least I can, with the inexperience of unlettered Ishmael,
and with about as much skill as he possess in the art of
whaling when he puts his seven ink marks on the page, toss
my harpoon out into the fathomless deep of cyber-space, and
discover something shared that the silent battle of the
books has never revealed to me.