MDDM Ch. 53 a realm of doubt

[jbor]

on 23/5/02 6:38 PM, Peter Fellows-McCully at pfm at anam.com wrote:

>> 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? 
> 
> It's not clear to me that Wicks has decided to include
> these in his tale. They appear rather as quotations might
> in any work, in some cases (not necessarily here) to set
> the "tone" or to provide a key to interpretation of the
> ensuing text. So maybe the implied narrator or the author
> decided to include the Wicksian tracts.
> 
> pfm
> 

Yes, that's the impression I get as well, particularly with those quotes
used as chapter mottos. And it's made quite obvious when the excerpts are
included in the actual text that someone else is narrating Wicks's
"journali[sing]" (see eg. 412.11 and "young Cherrycoke's" ghoulish
ruminations at 385-6).

My point is that there seem to be an array of Wicksian tracts, but that they
all seem to contain pretty much the same substance and be of the same style.
And I think the way that they have been orchestrated (eg. the careful
annotation which each extract has been given in the text) betrays something
of a satirical attitude towards Wicks. The fact that some or many of Wicks's
sermons have gone "Undeliver'd" is revealing in that he doesn't seem to have
exerted much influence at all over the men in the camp, and has rarely been
sighted in this central section of the narrative to this point. And there is
tremendous irony in the fact that he has titled another section from his
"day book" as "Unpublish'd Sermons". As compared to .... ? the question
begs.

And even when the quotes are included as chapter mottos I wouldn't say for
certain that these are read out in the LeSpark drawing room either. There's
the quote from his "Christ and History" which opens Ch. 35 for example, and
which is set amidst a heated debate being carried out in the drawing room,
but which I don't think is ever verbally inserted into that debate (or
perhaps it has been written later as a response to that debate).

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65069&sort=date

There it's as if poor old Wicks is cut out of the discussion again, is not
being taken seriously. Both young and old he comes across (to me anyway) as
pretentious and arrogant, foolish (and perceived as a fool), even a little
pathetic.

best