MMV

[Ghetta Life]

>From: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
> > >In this I disagree. I don't share this sense and I don't think that the 
>story has a morale like "they were so shallow they deserved to die" or 
>"they looked too weird, it served them right."
> >
> > But this is precisely what the story communicates.
> >
>
>This only would be the case if Siegel had been presented throughout the 
>story as a nice guy easy to identify with. But the contrary is the case; 
>he's clearly set up as an asshole nobody identifies with.

I fail to see how he's presented Siegel as an asshole.  I asked for examples 
of how he's presented as "morally deficient" (or whatever).  I don't think I 
read to identify with a character, only to somehow understand him, which 
does require empathy of sorts.  Siegel shares many of his thoughts to the 
reader, but I don't see any that warn me against sympathising with him, 
until the end when he abandons the party to slaughter.

>This is what King has to say about it:
>
>"By the end of the story, however, the reader understands that the careless 
>use of language (the very crime that Pynchon has been accused of), or the 
>refusal to use it at all, can lead to disaster.

*What?*  How does "the reader" understand this lesson about careless use of 
language?

>But if Siegel's moral failure boils down to his careless use of language, 
>the reader's moral failure can be attributed to careless reading.

Again, *What?*  All these statements about a lesson about language and 
reading that I didn't see at all.  Since you are quoting this guy would you 
care to point out the specifics of the text which teach these lessons?

>Loon's moral failure stems from his Windigo psychosis, a condition that 
>causes him to identify with a mythological figure who feeds on human flesh. 
>Few of us are in danger of identifying with either Loon or this mythic 
>monster.Yet most readers, despite Pynchon's warnings, identify with Siegel, 
>who is simply a more clever cannibal. Like Loon, then, the reader also 
>suffers from a form of Windigo psychosis.[sup12] To blame Pynchon for this 
>unflattering diagnosis --or simply to refuse to acknowledge it--is itself a 
>moral failure."

Pardon me, but this whole paragraph is bullshit.  I essence it says that 
anyone who doesn't see the lessons or diagnoses that this critic see in the 
storey is suffering from a moral/perceptual failure.  But what are 
"Pynchon's warnings?"  Does he cite them specifically?

> > At least in his later, better works he develops some sympathy for the 
>world as it is and the characters who occupy it.
>
>What kind of sympathy could you "develop" personally for a guy like Cleanth 
>Siegel, Pointsman, Major Marvy or even Slothrop?

What I was refering to was his later versions of the "Whole Sick Crew," 
starting with the characters in V, and continuing with the characters who 
become the Counterforce in GR.  They are all "decadent" in some fashion, but 
they still have their sympathetic side.  They aren't slaughtered by Pynchon 
at the end of the book.   The problem of a flawed world is explored in both 
these works, but an aknowledgement is implicit that they are still all we've 
got.

> > Bingo!  All these references with no point or payoff.  No synthesis
>
>Well, then you should analyse them one by one. I don't think that a
>postmodern short story requires a synthesis, only some kind of consistency.
>But this consistency can best lie in its inconsistency. As David Seed says,
>and I quote this explicitly to counter Rob's argument that "the story
>suffers from precisely the same pretentiousness that it satirises":

I don't read novels in the light of anything called "postmodern."  I expect 
them to stand on their own.  Anad I attribute the pretentiousness inherent 
in the references to be a failing on Pynchon's part, not a consistency with 
those things which he criticises.  That would be to make his authorship of 
the story a parody of his own authorship, if you follow my drift.

>"(...) the story's humor and surrealism grows out of a disparity between 
>its
>various elements. We jerk unsettingly from anthropological reference to
>party small-talk to literary allusions, all of which pull against each 
>other
>rather than settle down into stable oppositions. At the heart of the story
>lies a belief in the inauthenticity of contemporary life and a split in the
>self between feeling and intellect."
>("The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon," Iowa City 1988, p. 20)

With this paragraph I agree.  But his use of a completely contrived figure 
of a cannabil to call down judgement (with the implied consent of the host). 
  And this role as briger of judgement is specifically prefaced in the role 
Lepescu gives him"  "You are now the host. As host you are a trinity: (a) 
receiver of guests" -- ticking them off on his fingers -- "(b) an enemy and 
(c) an outward manifestation, for them, of the divine body and blood."  
Lepescu decides that this night it is time for Siegel to "pull the plug" on 
this collection of souls.  Only it's not until the end of the story that 
this becomes clear.  Pulling the plug is clearly Pynchon's intention 
(manifest in the words of his shaman-like Lepscu), not the character 
Siegel's shortcommings.

> > > 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).
>
> > As I said earlier: hamfisted.
>
>Without giving arguments for this, sorry.

It only makes "sense" in the most unsubtle and moralising sense, 
particularly in the juvenile sense that robert describes above.  And the use 
of this "cannibal" to exact this judgment is almost racist. At the very 
least it is an overwrought contrivance.

Ghetta

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