should we trust Blicero? WAS RE: Protagonists and points of view (is Re: History: Death Repression in Man

[Doug Millison]

My comment to "Morris" remains untouched:
The tricky part is to get a grip on what Pynchon is actually doing with this
sort of material - his response to Brown is complex, the way he weaves these
ideas into his fiction, and I expect it's not at all straightforward or
simple.  Does he use Brown's ideas in ways that tend to support and
strengthen them, or does he use them in ways that tend to undermine
confidence in them?

Pynchon certainly describes Blicero as a diseased monster and a travesty,
through the POV of one or another of his narrators or characters. And it's
appropriate to question how a reader is to understand what Blicero says or
does.   Having a diseased Nazi monster comment about America and what
America means, for example, won't carry the same charge as if Pynchon had a
different character in a different situation make those same comments.
Compare America filtered through Blicero to America filtered through one of
the many characters and narrators in M&D. Pynchon, as author, has the final
say on what stays on the page for us to read, and he uses irony,
juxtaposition, parody, humor well to inflect his stories.

"jbor":
[snip]


Swing:
"Why does Pynchon have the Captain wear a false cunt crafted by the
notorious 
Mme. Ophir in Berlin? Why is it that he wears false labia and bright purple 
clitoris molded of synthetic rubber (see Sasuly) and Mipolam, the new 
polyvinyl chloride? [snip]

The Jew who finally
buried Hitler, Mel Brooks demonstrates that comedy is not only capable of
exposing stupidity and pretension. At times, it can also exorcise and
nullify evil--not as powerfully, but sometimes more lastingly than a hundred
Sherman tanks, a thousand B-42s, or a million GIs. 
http://www.thenewrepublic.com/052801/3brustein052801.html