Protagonists and points of view (is Re: History: Death Repression in Man

[jbor]

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>From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
>

> That's the sort of question a reader can ask in any Pynchon novel. How is
> the reader to understand the political-historical views of a character like
> Blicero, for example? How seriously is the reader supposed to take a
> character who is described as a diseased monster,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it Greta and/or Thanatz who describe
Blicero in these terms? How reliable are they as narrators? By adopting
their view does it automatically follow that one must "admire" these two?

Other characters describe Blicero in quite different ways: Enzian's use of
the term in that oft-quoted line "toad to prince, prince to fabulous
monster" (660) carries quite a different valency. Enzian's reminiscences and
conjectures about what happened to Blicero are almost wistful, certainly
tender.

> a travesty, more
> plastic/synthetic/manufactured than human?

No, I don't think he's ever described in these terms.

> Is that different from the way
> that the reader reacts to a character like Roger Mexico,

Apart from his absolute selfishness vis a vis Jess, and his youthful
smugness, I lose a little bit of sympathy for Roger when he mashes the
secretary's eyeglasses into the carpet (632-33) for no good reason other
than the fact that she has a German name. It also reminds me of Oedipa's
irrational urge to go hunting for Volkswagens on the freeway in _Lot49_.

I don't think that there is ever any one stable and privileged perspective
in any of the novels. Humans are human: flawed, but not inherently evil; and
this is the mould in which P's characters are created.

> or Rev. Cherrycoke?
> Do we take the material presented through Zoyd's point of view-- knowing him
> as a pothead and masturbator -- as seriously as we take the material
> presented through Prairie's point of view?  The authorial irony is deeply
> layered in Pynchon's novels.

I don't think that the sort of simple-minded prejudices Doug seems to be
advocating here carry much weight at all. Pynchon's texts don't moralise, or
do so rarely: that doesn't seem to stop some readers from trying to force
them to, however.

best