MDDM Ch. 53 a realm of doubt

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Polemical, pompous, petulant, pretentious, at times
almost pigheaded.
Agreed. All very good examples provided. 
But what Wicks are we talking about? The elder or the
younger? 
The character or the narrator? 
All of the examples are from writings of the young
Wicks (the character). 
The elder Wicks (a narrator) decides to include these
in his tale. 
Why? 
Does he still believe in what he wrote? 
Does he believe that what he wrote is still important
so many years later? Does he include them for some
didactic purpose? 
Does he even believe the "the truths" in the lessons
he teaches or in the "values" in the sermons he
preaches? 
Does he include these scraps from his non-public texts
because he has an audience and they have little choice
but to sit and listen to his sermons and the like
because they are so hooked on the tale of Dixon and
Mason? 
Some readers will no doubt answer that all these
questions are irrelevant. This answer, which can be
quite liberating, is more satisfying than the usual
one we get, that is, you are asking the wrong
questions or those are modernist questions about a
postmodern fiction. 
This is a cop out. And it's been done before. In fact,
it what happened to literary criticism when it tried
to come to terms with Modern fiction. The answers were
always about how the other person got the question
wrong (weak polemical) and how arrogant (blind
pomposity) the other person was to attribute his own
subjective misreading of the text to the author. At
times, and Pynchon criticism has its examples of this,
petulant professors took to hitting below the belt.  
ThanksGod we don't have the round these parts. 

The old man has not quite cast off is foolish pride.
He remains, if only absurdly, petulance and polemical.
Old age has not mellowed his propensity for pomposity.
  And yet, the elder Wicks is not the younger man. The
younger Wicks is a character in the elder's tale. This
much is clear from the text. We needn't impose
Modernist fictional standards of clarity to make this
claim. The elder Wicks is not a reliable narrator.
He's an unreliable narrator. Pynchon use of the
unreliable narrator is noteworthy.  To my knowledge,
no specific study of Pynchon's unreliable narrators
exists. We know that one reason to employ an
unreliable narrator is to earn the reader's confusion.
Pynchon certainly earns the reader's confusion in M&D
by making Wick unreliable. At the same, Pynchon makes
use of intense dramatic irony (comic & tragic). To do
so, he moves out of the unreliable Wicks narrative and
into a more direct reliable narration. How is the
Wicks narrative (Wicks the elder, who is of course
also a character in M&D) treated differently than
Wicks the character (the younger) by the direct
reliable narrative? In my opinion, the direct reliable
narrative builds sympathy throughout the text for both
the younger and the elder Wicks. This is relatively
simple in M&D. It had been a very trick thing in
Pynchon's fiction. We know that Pynchon can build
sympathy for the most vicious characters, forcing the
reader to see human value and worth in characters,
whose actions, if objectively considered, would be
universally deplored. One way he eases the reader into
perceiving the human worth and value of very wicked
characters is to cast shadow characters and doubles.
But Wicks is not evil or wicked, only pompous,
petulant, polemical, and pigheaded. Sympathy for Wicks
is built the Modern way. Wicks is an old man. Old men
have a special and tender spot in Pynchon's books,
particularly if they have the ills of ages, they are a
bit confused, a little bit crazy, cast off, homeless, 
and nobody really cares.  

Nobody ever sings sympathy for the Angels
PD & B 

--- Otto <o.sell at telda.net> wrote:
>      A Realm of Doubt
> 
> If Wicks' writings are "petulant, polemic and
> pompous" as you say they are
> only so because the original Bible texts as all the
> other major works of
> logocentrism have forgrounded that style & way of
> writing. For me these
> Wicks'- pieces always are a source of postmodern
> inspiration and I would
> hardly call them hardly polemic, but very tricky.
> But many thanks for
> listing them up, makes it easier to talk about it. I
> hadn't done that yet,
> now I could copy your NB simply to my book:
> 
> "Doubt is the essence of Christ. (...) The final
> pure Christ is pure
> uncertainty. (...) a prophetic dream, a
> communication with a dead person?"
> (511.11-14):
> 
> This is the Bible-part Wicks is referring to:
> 
> 024 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus,
> was not with
>         them when Jesus came.
> 025 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We
> have seen the
>         LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall
> see in his hands
>         the print of the nails, and put my finger
> into the print of
>         the nails, and thrust my hand into his side,
> I will not
>         believe.
> 026 And after eight days again his disciples were
> within, and
>         Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors
> being shut, and
>         stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto
> you.
> 027 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy
> finger, and behold
>         my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and
> thrust it into my
>         side: and be not faithless, but believing.
> 028 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD
> and my God.
> 029 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast
> seen me, thou
>         hast believed: blessed are they that have
> not seen, and yet
>         have believed.
> 
>        (John 20)
> 
> Those are blessed are we, *if* we believe, because
> we're not in the
> lucky/unlucky Thomas-position of that last
> John-verse to be convinced by
> direct evidence. If we're unnelievers we're doomed
> to be always in doubt
> about facts that are normally sold to us as
> unquestionable.
> 
> So it goes with some other parts you have mentioned.
> On 275 he says some
> truths about the Southern, quasi-aristocratic
> lifestyle, the confederate
> idea (depending on "Lords and Serfs"), and WACO-mind
> of everybody being his
> own sovereign as still exemplified in the US-gun
> laws of today, further
> elaborated on 481 with the contradiction of
> "Craftsmen whose Piety is
> unquestion'd" who have suffered some kind in
> Inquisition themselves, and
> have no problem at all to make their living on
> producing "the machinery of
> Murder".
> 
> "Christ and History" (349) describes the postmodern
> view of history very
> well.
> 
> The piece about the Ley-Lines (440) I read primarily
> as a mild criticsm of
> Green & Grassroot revolutionaries & other esoterical
> circles:
> 
> "Any number of devout enthusiasts (...) has his tale
> of real flights over
> the countryside. (...) No one knows what it is, 'tho
> thousands speculate."
> 
> greetings
> 
> Otto
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 10:31 PM
> Subject: MDDM Ch. 53
> >
> (schnipp)
> >
> > NB that Wicks has a collection of "Undeliver'd"
> sermons (511), as well as
> > his "Spiritual Day-Book" (275, 440, 481), his
> "Unpublished Sermons" (95),
> > and the work entitled "Christ and History" (349),
> but that they all seem
> to
> > contain exactly the same muddled mix of petulance,
> polemic and
> pompousness.
> >
> > best
> 
> 


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