Blicero's sexuality

Eric Rosenbloom ericr at sadlier.com
Tue Mar 20 16:31:33 CST 2001


jbor wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (lorentzen-nicklaus)
> >
> 
> >  even if true, this, of course, would not change at all the crucial issue
> >  (sexual perversity as mechanism of the historically increasing enfetishment
> of
> >  the inanimate?) of my question.
> 
> >From Locke's NYT review also:
> 
>     One feels in the end that Pynchon's imagination is so taken with the
>     imagery of Nazi death, so close to Blicero [ ... ] Pynchon's sensibility
>     and achievement here are limited by the very paranoid traits that he is
>     ostensibly criticizing.
> 
>     Like one of his main characters, Pynchon in this book seems almost to be
>     "in love, in sexual love, with his own death." [ ... ]
> 
> So many of the critics have needed to identify the lack of condemnation of
> Blicero in the text of _GR_ as a flaw. Others, like Eddins, need to invent a
> complicated framework whereby so-called "gnosticism" and non-white bread sex
> are deemed to signify "evil". More than this, they need to claim that
> Pynchon *intended* these to signify "evil" in his composition of the text.
> Their readings of the actual text, however, don't hold up.
> 
> And, on the other hand, if Blicero is simply claimed to be some demonic
> fictional creation, wouldn't that also qualify him as something of a Badass,
> those Gothic/Romantic monsters which Pynchon seems to like so much in that
> there 'Luddite' essay?

Yes, except that, like Pointsman, he serves the System as well as
himself. The Badass is a folk hero, like John Dillinger (or see the fun
portrayal of George (Babyface) Nelson in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?).

--
Eric



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