Protagonists and points of view

[jbor]

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>From: CyrusGeo at netscape.net

> 
> If you would be so kind as to satisfy my curiosity, where exactly do you
> find evidence of selfishness and smugness in Roger Mexico? As for the
> incident with the secretary, I believe it is she who attacks him first with
> her files. And, remember also that he is mad with anger for losing Jessica
> and is trying to find Pointsman in order to... well, piss on him. I think
> Roger is on the whole one of the most likeable characters in GR, therefore
> I beg of you to be more specific, if you can spare the time.

There's his little dummy spit to Jess (37-38), where he adopts a superior
tone with her ("We call them 'staff"), has a dig at Pointsman for being a
"Royal Fellow", and then calls Beaver "Nutria" just to bait her. Later he
refers to his colleagues as "raving lunatics" because of their belief in the
supernatural (58.7), and he's again "more cranky than usual today" when he
ridicules both "analysis" and "cause-and-effect" while walking with
Pointsman on the beach. (88-89)  His jealousy and self-consciousness are
somewhat cloying. If nothing else he's somewhat immature.

Miss Muller-Hochleben pounds against Roger's shins (632), but after grinding
the lenses with his foot Roger deliberately scatters the splinters of the
glass so that she cuts herself. (634) He's quite cruel, and belittles both
the secretary and Geza Roszavoglyi simply on the basis of race and accent.
But his actual motive for being there at all is that he wants to confront
and blame Pointy as the one responsible for Jessica leaving, which has
nothing at all to do with these two. Pynchon foregrounds the selfishness of
Rog's actions here by explaining that the tax file which Miss
Muller-Hochleben attacks his shins with actually links British industry with
the V-2 program (and the 00000 in fact!), adding wryly that "Roger's shins
are not set up for this kind of information." (632)

> If you will allow me to say so, Doug here is not ascribing moralization to
> Pynchon's text; he is talking about reader response to Pynchon's text.
> Readers (as viewers, in the case of movies) tend to like or dislike,
> identify with or outright hate certain characters, and of course the writer
> is not always to blame for this. Isn't that so?

Taking someone less seriously merely because they are a "pothead and
masturbator" implies a moral judgement I think, whether on the part of a
reader or, as I believe Doug meant to imply, on the part of the author. (He
was, after all, referring to "authorial irony".) But I certainly agree with
what you say about different readers' responses to characters, events etc
being different, subjective; and I think Pynchon is very aware of this and
that that's part of why he doesn't privilege his own personal likes and
dislikes, or prescribe a moral hierarchy, in the texts.

best