MMV

[jbor]

Context:
'Mortality and Mercy in Vienna', Pynchon's second published story, appeared
in _Epoch_ in Spring 1959. Subsequently Pynchon enrolled in a creative
writing class at Cornell University taught by the journal's editor, Baxter
Hathaway (cf. SL: 17).

So low is Pynchon's regard for it that the story is not mentioned -- let
alone included -- in the collection of his early stories published as _Slow
Learner_ (1984). Pynchon describes the stories that have been included in
that collection as "pretentious, goofy and ill-considered" (4); it's safe to
say that he believed that 'MMV' is even worse.

Setting:
Contemporary. The events take place at a party in a Washington apartment.

Plot:
Cleanth Siegel, the protagonist and source of narrative agency, arrives
alone and too early at the apartment and is immediately and
opportunistically installed as replacement host by David Lupescu. His role
as described by Lupescu is threefold: "receiver of guests", "enemy", and
God-surrogate. As the partygoers arrive Siegel observes their antics and
listens to their petty sagas of romance and jealousy in the makeshift
bedroom confessional. When he realises that Irving Loon, a psychotic Ojibwa,
is about to launch into a vengeful frenzy of slaughter and cannibalism, he
slips away and leaves the partygoers to their fate.

Characters:
Siegel is 30 years old and just returned from a diplomatic assignment in
Europe after stints in the army and college. He is in the throes of an early
mid-life crisis, feels as though he is "out of touch" with this Washington
set, and is eager to get back together with his old girlfriend, Rachel.

Rachel was supposed to meet Siegel at the party but she is unavoidably
detained, and unable to attend after all.

Lupescu is Siegel's "döppelganger". He is who Siegel would have become had
he stayed and not gone to Europe.

Where Siegel is clearly near enough to a Pynchonian alter-ego, his fictional
college roommate, Grossman, is perhaps based on Jules Siegel.

Harvey Duckworth seems to be a precursor of Seaman Pig Bodine.

Lucy, Debby Considine, Paul Brennan et al. are thoroughly selfish,
self-involved and insensitive.

Irving Loon is an Ojibwa Indian and Debbie Considine's latest "trophy". Over
the past few days he has gradually worked himself into a state of paranoid
psychosis known as "the Windigo".

Theme:
Like much of Pynchon's work the story centres on a clash of cultures and
belief systems, both those various cultural and family heritages which serve
to make up an individual and the different worldviews which compete or
co-exist within a society. No one religion or perspective is privileged over
any other as "the One True Faith" in the story, though there is a sense of
smug self-satisfaction in the way that Pynchon has Siegel leave the shallow
and selfish pseudo-bohemians to their supposed just deserts at the close.

Comment:
With its ostentatious and often gratuitous references to Shakespeare, the
Bible and gnostic Apocrypha, Jewish funeral traditions and Catholic church
rituals, bullfighting, Dada, Goethe, Eliot, Conrad, Albertus Magnus,
Santayana, Gaugin, foreign language phrases, Ojibwa culture and
psychopathology, and more, the story suffers from precisely the same
pretentiousness that it satirises in the shape of the partygoers babbling on
about "Zen", "San Francisco" and "Wittgenstein" -- perhaps self-consciously
and self-parodically, though, if so, not overtly enough. It's clear that
Pynchon identifies with Siegel and is distancing himself from the
pseudo-bohemian partygoers, but what is particularly jejune is the way the
narrative ultimately resolves itself in a blood-bath: it's a species of that
characteristic and supposedly shocking "and then the world exploded" climax
ending written by barely-pubescent prodigies ("a pose of ... somber glee at
any idea of mass destruction or decline" as he describes it in SL: 13).

The partygoers ("The Group") in this story are of a kind with those at
Meatball Mulligan's lease-breaking party in 'Entropy', and a prototype of
the Whole Sick Crew in _V._, although Pynchon is far less judgemental and
hostile towards the WSC, and their characterisations are much more rounded
than those of the pseudo-bohemians in 'MMV'. Cleanth Siegel is one of
Pynchon's hopelessly self-conscious and put-upon "schlemiel" characters,
like Lardass Levine in 'The Small Rain' and Dennis Flange in 'Low-Lands',
and an early incarnation of Benny Profane and Tyrone Slothrop, and perhaps
even Charles Mason. Rachel surfaces as Rachel Owlglass in _V._

best