Paleface Pynchon?

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> Terrance
> >> It's not
> >> the "crudeness" of Chaucrer's farts that elevate his text
> >> above Stearne's Fartman, is it? (sic)
> 
> I think Dave's point was clear and well made. For Stern it's the
> fart-in-itself which is both the medium and the message. 

Yes I got that part, but I'm not sure I understand:

The farts &c aren't
> the focus at all in Chaucer or Pynchon; they represent the biological
> reality of what it is to be human, as metaphor.
> 


> Seb
> >>  Not that you could ask for any
> >> Yes answers, but how many on the list WILL and DO walk through
> >> the White Visitation to eat shit (Pudding), play cross-dressed
> >> Hansel and Gretel (Weissmann) "fuck the boy" (that discussion
> >> about Weissmann and Enzian) or fall in love with a 12-year-old
> 
> But Pynchon *is* foregrounding the same type of abreaction that you get
> watching 'The World's Funniest Suicides' or whatever on the Tube, isn't he,


Suppose for arguments sake, he is, why? 


> confronting the reader with her or his complacency and self-delusion? the
> "realities" we pretend not to acknowledge, as Dave pointed out?

Why? For TV ratings? For mindless entertainment? Why?