pynchon-l-digest V2 #1718

[Doug Millison]

Blicero/Weissmann serves death; Pynchon's Badass promotes life, 
fights against the Enlightement project and its reduction of life 
from awesome miracle to dead machine. Blicero/Weissmann is certainly 
a "central" figure in GR, as "David Morris" asserts, but Terrance is 
correct to note that B/W is not heroic.  Pynchon paints him as a 
diseased, predatory monster, who, at the end, is willing to sacrifice 
his lover to the flames of the  death god he serves. Some critics 
would have no problem saying that in portraying him as such, Pynchon 
renders judgement on and condemns Blicero/Weissmann and all that he 
has come to represent (essentially, the Enlightenment project gone 
horribly wrong, and humans putting themselves in Hell because they 
choose to serve machines instead of loving life and each other) in 
the novel.

re rj's idea that Pynchon equates Blicero with The Badass, eric:
>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?).
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