Blicero

[jbor]

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>From: Jeremy Osner <jeremy at xyris.com>
>

> Agreed -- I have never seen Blicero as an unequivocally "evil"
> character, well, not since early in my first read anyways. Now Marvy, I
> tend to think his function is comic relief, but yeah, he's not at all
> likeable or sympathetic. I think the only two non-sympathetic characters
> in the book (that I can think of) are Marvy and Bloat -- Bloat is IMO
> way more *evil*, Marvy is just corrupt good ole' boy, kind of funny in
> that he always fucks up -- a bad guy but incompetent. (And in the end
> impotent as well.) Blicero/Weissman is OTOH complex and deep, certainly
> *evil* on a basic level; and also as you note *loved* by several
> sympathetic characters, and obsessed, and...

Yes, Katje "kept finding reasons not to pinpoint the Captain's rocket site"
(105.9): her loyalty to Blicero enough to earn her a traitor's bullet could
it have been spared. And one of the things that Pokler's eyes are opened to
-- perhaps the most surprising realisation of all -- is Blicero's honesty
and integrity in honouring the agreement with Frans "for the retrofit work
he'd done on the 00000" (432.22) by hand-signing and ensuring personal
delivery of that furlough form even when the war was obviously lost and the
work had been completed and Blicero needn't have done anything at all.
Enzian concludes: "Yes, he matters to me, very much. He is an old self, a
dear albatross I cannot let go." (661.7) And Gottfried's love for him is
pretty sincere.

It's a hard stretch for me to see that lone sentence at 606.24 providing any
sort of equivocation about Marvy's character (I agree that he is both comic
relief and a stereotype), particularly as he's just contemplated drowning
Manuela in the tub, or breaking her fingers, and admitted that all he wants
is "that sweet and nigger submissiveness". But I guess if it's enough to
"humanise" Marvy for a reader then so be it; it really doesn't measure up to
anywhere near the complexity of characterisation which Blicero is given in
the text.

I like what you note about your first reading of the text. The knee-jerk
prejudice against the Nazi officer which the reader *brings* to the text is
exactly the response which Pynchon wants to overturn in the novel, and he
does this very successfully imo.

best