Pynchon the gentle sadomasochist

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Sorry, I cited the wrong date for Postmodernist Fiction. The first
> quote I gave was from a still earlier piece. The article was undated but
> you can tell from context that it was written about 1977 or 1978. I
> haven't even seen the later work you cite. I haven't read Postmodernist
> Fiction clear though. Started in quite a while back, then just read that
> last love/death chapter this morning. Plenty of lacunae in my
> understanding of what McHale is saying.

Does McHale cite Norman O. Brown or Weber or McCluhan?  


> 
>  >
> > >
> > > In discussing the use of the second person pronoun as a means of
> > > violating the ontological boundaries between writer, reader, and
> > > character, McHale comes to the conclusion that the actual subject
> > > matter of the passages may be erotic love between the writer and
> > > the reader (or text) including appropriate sadomasochistic accompaniments.
> > > So that's a little different, isn't it? I don't feel so bad
> > > now. Handcuffs and whips may be the images I should be keeping in
> > > mind but they are clearly only props.  Pynchon is my playful lover and
> > > will do me no harm.
> >
> >
> > This is in Postmodernist Fiction (1987) PoMo simulates
> > Death....is a laboratory for experiments...oh boy, I'm on my
> > knees, lick, the leather, a Pointsman with a plastic penis
> > stands over me as I read, reading whip welts and scars and
> > reefers and shivers, cut my throat....oh! God, oh!
> 
> Yes, an imaginative performance but a critic is entitled to push the
> data sometimes if in a good cause. 

Could it be that McHale's reading of GR's narrator's is a
misreading? Does he have these relationship correct, the one
between author and reader? 

Not that McHale doesn't have plenty
> of data--he's read and remembered everything. And death is such a good
> cause.   So Pynchonesque. Plus there's that line in the Introduction of
> Slow Learner to the effect that when we speak seriousness in fiction we
> are ultimately talking about the attitude toward death.  A lot of
> resonation.
> 
> > >

Sure it resonates, Love and Death, but has McHale got this
right? It's not Freudian (McHale doesn't cite him either,
right?). What are McHale's sources for Love/Dearth for S&M?
Are the same as Pynchon's?  


jbor sez,

These are the people who head up those supposedly "evil"
corporations, and like the military and political leaders
Pynchon depicts -- Blicero and Pointsman and Pudding and ...
Reagan and Nixon -- they are not personifications of "evil"
at all but merely flawed and frail humans who have sold out:

     "We're all going to fail," Sir Marcus primping his
curls, "but the
   Operation won't." (GR 616)


Wrong guy to quote here. Might as well quote Nixon's "I'm
not a crook." Sir Marcus, Richard M., Blicero, Pointsman,
should be pissed on, but like Roger, we run out of piss. Too
bad, these guys are bad, the things they do are evil. Are
they us? Yes! They are frail humans just like us. To deny
the evil that Man has done, will do, or to project it onto a
mad scientist, an evil henchman of the corporate state, and
condemn it, Them, is not an act of contrition, penance,
return to a state of grace that gets us off the hook or
ensures that it won't happen again, it will, and we are all
responsible for what happens. Yes, even YOU! 

Ouch!