pynchon-l-digest V2 #1443

[Paul Mackin]

To everything there is a season

Turn turn turn.

I always thought P's use of turn and turning was because he heard that
song so often while he was writing the book. For a long time after also.
The Turning of Time in other words. Like at the end of the book. There is
a hand to turn the time. It sounds more fatalistic to me than Christian.
All is vanity and that sort of thing. Pokler's reaction to Dora seems one
of total despair. Wouldn't it be just too too selfish of him get 
concerned at that particular moment for his own personal salvation, which
a turning toward God would imply? With that horror staring him in the
face. Do we even know if Pokler believes in God? And will require
forgiveness? I doubt if anyone can have much confidence in their
assignment of any express  meaning to that passage however. The words
sound to me like an abdication of meaning--an abandonment of words as
sufficient unto the occasion. But that's not my point here. Will someone
please tell me what might be meant by "Pynchon's moralizing." Moralizing
for whom? When a character in a book suddenly makes the connection that
dreadful things are going on that he has been a part of, that's not
moralizing. If he truly didn't know what was going on (which is hard to
believe) he is just acknowledging a newly perceived reality--in this case
that the the cost of his beloved rocket program was at a very high
price, one he might in the future not choose to pay. No. Seems
to me moralizing has to be a reader thing, must redound to the benefit of
the reader or not at all. And in this case any purported lesson to the
reader is quite beyond belief. Can any conceivable reader be sitting there
book in lap wondering if Pynchon is going to step out and condemn slave
labor as immoral. I really think not. Anyway that's the way I see it.

			P.