V.V. (15) The "Bad" Priest

[Samuel Moyer]

> Thanks. There's no reason *not* to take it at face value though, or at
least
> no more or less than we take anything in Mondaugen's & Foppl's Stories or
> Stencil's "impersonations" or his dad's diary or even the purportedly
> "straight" or "authorial" narrative of the WSC's exploits at face value.
But
> you're quite right to question the "integrity" of Fausto's "confessions"
as
> well. Part of the point of postmodern fiction is to foreground the
intrinsic
> unreliability and subjectivity of *any* text: "There are no facts, only
> interpretations," as Nietzsche has it.
>

I agree... but when reading Maudougen's story you are told outright that it
has been "Stencilized."  Here you get a confession.  Even more, quotes from
a diary... a primary record.  So I think the natural reaction is to believe
everyword of what the 'almost priest' writes in his apologia.


> But there is a palpable heightening in the dramatic intensity when you
> consider the tenor which Pynchon has engineered in this chapter. It is
> Fausto's "apologia pro vita sua" (306.2), and it is explicitly written for
> the daughter, Paola, alone. It's almost as if he was (and still is, in his
> selective excerpting from the diaries) wanting to offload some of his own
> parental neglect onto Elena with this climactic revelation, trying to
redeem
> himself in his daughter's eyes by telling of the mother's intention to
abort
> and his own exaggeratedly "moral" reflex when he found out: "I would have
> killed her, I think." (341.9)
>
> I don't think Paola was fooled for a moment, though. She doesn't seem to
be
> the gullible type.
>
> best
>

This letter was bothering her back when she was McClintric's Ruby....So what
is her reaction to it... She is worried about him... but again, I agree with
you that she wasn't fooled... or didn't care about the confession.  I guess
we never really learn what her end of the letter is...