GRGR (20) Special Topic: Is It OK to Be a Manichean?

[Michael Perez]

   “There is to this enterprise, Pointsman knows, a danger of
seduction.  Because of the symmetry. . . .  He’s been led
before, you know, down the garden path by symmetry:  in
certain test results . . . in assuming that a mechanism must
imply its mirror image— ‘irradiation,’ for example, and
‘reciprocal induction’ . . . and who ever said that either had to
exist?  Perhaps it will be so this time, too.” [144.10-15, ellipses
are Pynchon’s]
   Pointsman’s application of Pavlovian mechanisms to
symmetrically link the V-1 and V-2 here caused him and,
hopefully, the reader to distrust the assumption that everything
implies its opposite.  In _GR_, and Pynchon in general, we
have a lot of mirror image counterparts and a lot of shadow
connections that cause the reader to be led down the garden
path by seemingly obvious symmetry.  Does it have to be so
every time?  Do we have to assume that every time we are
presented with pairs of opposites that the reader is supposed to
be drawn into considering on which side we are?  On which
side Pynchon is?  Is it OK to be a Manichean?
Right at the beginning of our current episode we have
Slothrop “wondering where he’s going” [434.4].  Granted, his
short-term memory may be suffering, but a few lines down he
“perceives that he is losing his mind” [434.10-11]. The
narrator, focused through Slothrop, goes on:

   “If there is something comforting—religious, if
   you want—about paranoia, there is still also
   anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to
   anything, a condition not many of us can bear for
   long.  Well right now Slothrop feels himself sliding
   onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the
   whole city around him going back roofless,
   vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only
   pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left
   between him and the wet sky.” [434.11-17]

   Are these our only choices, paranoia or anti-paranoia?  It is
easy for the reader to discern the opposites in _GR_, as it was
in _V._, especially, and other Pynchon works.  However, I
don’t believe it is the point of all this that life IS only a matter
of opposites, but that there are people that DO go through their
lives thinking the world is a two party system.  After the
opposites are no longer valid, those that choose to perpetuate
the antagonism become superfluous to Them.  Even though
some may still be dangerous, they are now working on their
own, isolated, invisible to Them, but real to those whose lives
they will affect.  The book is not finished yet.
   For now, we have the signs all around us.  We are shown a
roofless rickety wood house, a burned-out tank, everywhere
Slothrop turns is emptiness, everything rusting, falling apart,
becoming hollowed out.  Artifacts of the European theatre of
“The Good War” are now all surface, masks like _Saturday
Evening Post_ cover images, shells like the Qlippoth, lifeless
empty containers like the Otukungurua.
   This episode, and the one following, take place in late
July, 1945.  The Nazis surrendered unconditionally in early
May, but as Slothrop becomes less important to Them and his
quest becomes less important to him, other teams are being
picked, other armies are being conscripted.  Those that were
the bad guys are now the first round draft picks for the new
war, the so-called “Cold War.”  Some, like Horst Achfaden and
Slothrop get cut, others like Werner von Braun become like the
star quarterback.  Others can’t let go of the old battles, though.
   The Rossini - Beethoven debate between Säure and Gustav
over music that is either easy or difficult to appreciate, which
could be (and has been probably since the first cave paintings
and log music) about any form of artistic expression, tempts
the reader to shift into Manichean mode yet again.  Steven
Weisenburger devotes an entire page and a half in the
_Companion_ to the many dualisms implied by this debate: 
Italian-German, warm-cold, southern-northern,
simple-complex, unsophisticated-erudite, irrational-rational,
organic-mechanical, melody based-harmony based,
comedy-tragedy.
  A bit further on in the text, Säure and Gustav are at it
again, this time over the taste of the marijuana they are
smoking.  Another southern / northern debate ensues, Säure
saying it is spritely, aromatic, playful, smooth, fragrant, full,
seasoned, probably from Jebel Sarho (which Weisenburger
tells us is “just above the Sahara”[SW, 208]) and Gustav saying
it is nice, metallic, tasty, mannerly, nutty, clean, piquant, from
the “Haut Alas” of Morocco.
   Again are there only two choices, two camps to join?  The idea
of alternatives and the choices people make among them seems
a large part of Pynchon’s revealed curiosity about humanity. 
In the end, I don’t believe he thinks that it is OK to be a
Manichean, but he seems to realize that people find it
necessary to view the choices in life in a binary, dualistic,
two-party fashion.  What about oneness, though, does it exist at
all?  
   “‘. . . Perhaps you used a rifle, a radio, a typewriter.  Some
typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians
than our little A4 could ever have hoped to.  You are either
alone absolutely, alone with your own death, or you take part
in the larger enterprise, and you share in the deaths of others. 
Are we not all one?  Which is your choice . . . the little cart, or
the great one. ”  [453.41 - 454.1-6, ellipses are mine]  Here, in
Fahringer’s rant, we have an acceptance of individual guilt, a
shuffling of blame to include everyone else, singularity,
unification, inevitability, choice, force of circumstances,
uncertainty, finality, individuality, universality, quibbles over
matters of degree - everything, something, and nothing.  It is
all, both, neither, none, and only one and it is us and Them. 
Take your pick, but it might lead us to delusion or paranoia,
if we do not think of these ways of dividing the world as
anything but convenient, but insufficient, methods of coping with the
enormity of life.


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