VLVL (6) Pynchon's parables

[jbor]

on 4/10/03 7:12 PM, Mike Weaver at mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:

> Of course not - you were claiming everyone sold everyone out - the text
> says everyone was making up stories NOT everyone was selling out, so the
> everyone includes the sell outs but isn't all of them.

Fair enough. "Everyone they knew" told lies. *Many* of their "friends" sold
one another out. The '50s in Hollywood was "thick with betrayal,
destructiveness, cowardice, and lying" -- from people on "the left".

> e.g. turning a simple
> demurral into an heroic act of defiance for example - and don't go hunting
> the text for that, it's just a possible example.

Another one from the Weaver edition of Pynchon's novel, obviously.

> I agree except differing between those who did sell out and the rest. My
> criticism of your angle remains constant - your failure to differentiate
> between levels of human weakness, be perfect or be damned seems to be your
> attitude.

Not at all. In fact, I think that pretty well all of the characters in the
novel are sympathetic in part -- multi-faceted at the very least. You on the
other hand compute the "goodness" and "badness" of characters according to
their "left" quotients, otherwise known as the "internal 'us' factor", which
is some nonsense formula you've worked up from your own doctrinaire
attitudes and which you're determined to apply in spite of anything the text
has to say.

best