MMV: Context

[jbor]

King, Vincent. 'Giving Destruction a Name and a Face: Thomas Pynchon's
"Mortality and Mercy in Vienna"'. Studies in Short Fiction 35.1, 1998, pp.
13-21. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm happy to forward a pdf to anyone who
would like to read it.

> King says that there is a "general
> consensus" that 'MMV' is "one of Pynchon's best short stories",

King states his case in a footnote: "Pynchon's decision to omit 'Mortality
and Mercy' from _Slow Learner_ may be attributed to the *perception*, voiced
by White, that the story validates Loon's violence." (14) They're his
italics, and he's referring to Allon White's 1981 article in _Critical
Quarterly_.

It's a thoroughly illogical claim. There are no grounds at all to say that
Pynchon had read Allon White's essay or that he was cowed by it into leaving
'MMV' out of the compilation of his early short stories. If it were the case
that White and other readers had misunderstood or misinterpreted the story
(which starts to open up various other cans of worms regarding authorial
intention and reader response, and whether or not the quality of a story
might have something to do with how well, or whether, it communicates what
the author intended it to), surely Pynchon would have included the story in
_SL_, or at least mentioned it and its reception (as he does with 'Entropy'
for example), in order to try to disabuse the reading public of the false
"*perception*" they hold, or which had been foisted upon them.

Worse than this, King's argument lacks internal consistency, because part of
his conclusion is that in the story Pynchon has deliberately manipulated the
reader to come to this "wrong" perception, that "it is the *reader's*
indifference to these signs [i.e. that Siegel is a psychopath] that makes us
an accessory to Siegel's crime and allows Pynchon to explore his actual
subject: the moral cost of misreading." (16)

best

PS I agree with Terrance. The constant sniping, off-topic posts and
avalanche of cut-and-paste ballast do serve to stifle discussion and deter
new subscribers, however many "voices" there might be. Posting a definition
of "torero" or informing us who TS Eliot was is a waste of bandwidth. The
name "Lucy" in 'MMV' has no more connection to St Lucy than it does to
Lucille Ball or Wordsworth -- or, if it does, that connection is not
established simply by googling up a bio. Signal to noise ratio for August
2004 stands at no more than 1-2%. My 2 cents.