VV(13): Enters Weismann

[Doug Millison]

-----Original Message-----
From:  [mailto:fqmorris at hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 7:56 AM
To: jbor at bigpond.com; michel.ryckx at freebel.net
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: VV(13): Enters Weismann


"David Morris":
"I think jbor's characterization of W. below is accurate."

Somehow, that doesn't surprise me. One hand washes the other. :-)

"David Morris":
"W. seems a 
slightly-deranged comic boob which is distinctly at odds with his character 
in GR.  In V. he's only a sideshow, not central, so the development in GR 
really makes him another character entirely with only the incidentals for 
continuity."

Look at the context in which Pynchon puts Weissmann -- in V., an officer in
the service of a nation on a mission of genocide -- and the continuity with
GR is unmistakeable. He's a younger man in V., of course. I suppose you
could argue Weissmann/Blicero is a sort of "comic boob" in GR, too -- all
that melodramatic whining and whingeing and carrying on in his self-pitying
parody of Rilkean German Romanticism (but lacking the empathy and insight
that lets Rilke get to the value of individual suffering as a means to
solidarity with fellow humans), even as he advances the Nazi cause, inflicts
pain on those most loyal to him, sends his lover up in flames as tribute to
the death god he serves. Weissmann fulfills in GR all the potential Pynchon
gifts him with in V.