MDMD Grief & Insanity

[Judy Panetta]

A-a-and like a mirror reflecting a mirror: Wicks is a liar and M&D is a work
of fiction. But I give points for imagination.

JP

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
Behalf Of Jasper Fidget
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:52 AM
To: argirios zias; pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: MDMD Grief & Insanity


Or--while overthinking--what are the chances that Wicks is a liar?  It's
stated he must continue to entertain the children in order to continue to
feast upon their parents' hospitality and that he'd already run through all
manner of stories and tales; what happens when the storyteller runs out of
stories to tell?--he makes them up.  (He does tell, after all, about talking
dogs eg.)  Storyteller of course, if not liar; why should we assume the
story of M&D will differ so much from the story of the Accursed Ruby of
Mogok--selected for its "moral usefulness", we readers, "as usual, not being
consulted in this."  (p. 7)

Perhaps his lateness to the funeral is due to his not knowing about it until
the news had spread to him (rather than by direct notification).  So
far--and it's my first trip through, and without supporting materials--his
adult audience seems to indulgently regard him in the same manner adults
today watch television (while I'm at it: maybe Wicks is a kind of
television, a spectacle, the same kind of flickering lightshow with the same
kind of effect).  Just to go critical mass with this: maybe Wicks is Pynchon
and we are Pitt and Pliny; don't we respond in a similar manner when we hear
a forecast of a Hanging: "Excellent!"  Or-or Wicks is History, yeah...!

Jasper Fidget

----- Original Message -----
From: "argirios zias" <argirioszias at hotmail.com>
To: <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: MDMD Grief & Insanity


>
> Well, I was thinking, perhaps overt hinking, what with all these bad lines
> being drawn and nobody's right if everybody's got a bomb, that Wicks is
> crazy. Well, I think Oediapa, and Zoyd, Slothrop, Stencil, and even
> Benny, maybe most of the narrators of P's novels are.insane.
>
> As regards dear Ben, I simply can't believe a man would leave a girl like
> Fina.
>
> Anyway, we get twisted all up and around with Wicks, kinda like Stencil.
We
> twist into subjunctive, into
> the quest for what might have been but for remembrances disturbed and
> history tangling everything  up in the deep. Dive deep, Ishmael.
>
> Isn't it possible that Wicks, who didn't get to attend Mason's funeral,
nor
> his burial, is in a state of
> delirium brought on by his grief? And that his not having attended Mason's
> burial, is the cause of his insanity?
>
> We all have different ways of dealing with loss, with grief, with death.
> That's cool. It will help me to deal with all this madness, if I can talk
> about the madness in a fiction by Thomas R. Pynchon.
>
> So, I will.
>
> Gary
>
>
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