Pornography & Technics & Death

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Lorentzen / Nicklaus wrote:
> 
> > Paul Mackin schrieb:
> >
> > > Unlike most  traditional novels I'd say GR
> > > characters never really learn anything that transforms then.

Right, GR is not a "traditional" novel in this sense, in
fact it is "anti-traditional" in this sense. Most Characters
don't learn anything and those that do are are not
transformed by their learning, but rather lapse back to
their conditioned selves after experiencing what would be a
transforming event or revelation of some sort in a more
"traditional" novel. 

For example, in Ensign Morituri's Story (GR.474). "We are
conditioned to forget" GR.474, "So Ensign Moritori committed
then the only known act of heroism in his career....His
conditioning, his verbal, ranked and uniformed self took
over again." (GR.478) 

See Fowler's 'A Reader's Guide to GR' where he notes that
"human motive as the most important fact in dramatic event"
(115) does not operate in GR. 

However, although Pynchon subverts traditional character
motivation, thus subverting both the quests and the questers
(in too many ways to list, though if we take Slothrop as our
example we can compile a list that is representative of how
"traditional" motivation is undermined in GR) so characters
are not where we will find the "traditional" maturation,
evolution, learning, etc. as we do in say,  Pip of "Great
Expectations",  or Jude of "Jude The Obscure" or Tom Jones
of Fielding's masterwork, the protagonist's journey to
maturation or as Kai noted, bildungsroman, is still
represented, as is motivation, only what motivates
characters are various Forces. This is what Pynchon is
concerned with, the forces of consciousness, though
consciousness is not individualized nor is it separate from
the forces "outside" consciousness.  Again, Slothrop is our
best model. In these Anubis chapters we are told that
Slothrop is to be counted among the zone's lost and as
individual character this is the case, but at the level of
force motivation, Slothrop is transformed and transcends.