Giving Destruction a Name and Face

[Dave Monroe]

>From Vincent King, "Giving Destruction a Name and
Face: Thomas Pynchon's 'Mortality and Mercy in
Vienna,'" Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 35, No. 1
(Winter 1998), pp. 13-21 ...

Thomas Pynchon's "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" ends
with the aptly named Irving Loon gunning down
unsuspecting victims at a Washington party. Cleanth
Siegel, the protagonist, anticipates this brutal
attack
but fails to warn the other guests. Instead, he walks
blithely out of the apartment "whistling,"
good-naturedly sealing the fate of those who remain
behind (201). Siegel's reaction to the massacre is as
disturbing as his refusal to stop it: "At the first
floor landing," Siegel "heard the first screams, the
pounding of footsteps, the smashing of glass. He
shrugged" (201). 

According to Allon White, this gesture reflects
Siegel's and Pynchon's moral indifference. Both, White
insists, are guilty of "shrugging off" the murders
(61). This "shrug," he says, "shows up the fine limits
of Pynchon's story at the same time as revealing the
moment (so often repeated in American history) when
America's confused liberalism emerges as scandalously
self-conscious indifference" (62). Rising to Pynchon's
defense, Douglas Keesey argues that White errs by
equating Siegel with the author (14). Keesey
acknowledges, however, that a comment from the preface
to Slow Learner (Pynchon's only collection of short
fiction) seems to encourage such a reading. Writing in
1984, 25 years after the publication of his first
short story, Pynchon confesses that "[a] pose I found
congenial in those days--fairly common, I hope, among
pre-adults--was that of somber glee at any idea of
mass
destruction or decline (13). Pynchon's decision to
leave "Mortality and Mercy" out of Slow Learner might
lead one to conclude that Pynchon could no longer
muster any sophomoric delight in the killing spree
that takes place at the end of the story.

Having failed to counter White's critique of Pynchon,
Keesey seeks to rehabilitate Siegel, a move that makes
defending Pynchon unnecessary. Keesey asserts that the
story focuses not on the horror of Siegel's
indifference but on the conditions that created it.
"Pynchon," he contends, "is the author who shows us
step by step what hereditary and environmental
pressures led to Siegel's confusion and formed the
background to his pose of indifference" (14). Keesey
strains to depict "Mortality and Mercy" as a
neo-realistic examination of the liberal axiom that
criminals are simply products of their environment. 

Keesey is not the only critic to mischaracterize
Siegel's deadly shrug. Joseph Slade, for example,
describes Siegel as a hysteric who "[b]y loosing the
berserk Indian [Irving Loon] ... has acted as prophet
and healer to the waste land; he has healed its
sickness by annihilation" (7). While Slade certainly
doesn't endorse Siegel's behavior, his language
suggests that Siegel isn't particularly accountable
for his actions. Rather than blaming Siegel's
ndifference on hereditary and environmental pressures,
Slade presents an insanity defense, portraying Siegel
as a lunatic who attempts to save his flock by
destroying them.

As we shall see, though, Siegel is far too calculating
and self-aware to escape judgement so easily. 

David Seed's assessment of Siegel is even more
sympathetic. Following up on Slade's notion that
Siegel "performs as a mock-priest partly because he is
forced to act out his resemblances to Lupescu," Seed
suggests that Siegel's culture pushes him into this
role of false priest (22). He explains that Siegel's
quotations from ritual verge on parody because they
are mimicking an empty form, a relic of Siegel's
cultural inheritance which was dead even before it
reached him. The religious references thus gesture
towards absent spaces and strengthen our sense of the
hollowness of contemporary culture. (22) 

By focusing on the forces that shape Siegel's behavior
(heredity and environment; religious delusions;
culture), Keesey, Slade, and Seed fail to
acknowledge--much less explore--the moral questions
that surround Siegel's actions. Consequently, they are
themselves guilty of shrugging off--or, at the very
least, downplaying the seriousness of--the murders.
And, by doing so, they reinforce White's accusation
that "Mortality and Mercy" (and, by extension, all
postmodern fiction) is morally suspect. 

Siegel's cavalier attitude toward Irving Loon's
rampage clearly merits a fuller examination. And
although I disagree with White's assessment of
"Mortality and Mercy" (as well as his decision to use
Pynchon as a platform from which to attack American
liberalism), it is appropriate to ask if Pynchon takes
Loon's murders as lightly as Siegel does. John Dugdale
identifies a reference that suggests that this
question of Pynchon's culpability is actually central
to the story. Grossman, Siegel's college roommate,
describes the conflicted Siegel as a "House divided
against itself" (197). Dugdale notes that this
quotation from the Gospel of Matthew (12: 25) "closely
follows" this pivotal passage:

I tell you this: there is not a thoughtless word that
comes from men's lips but they will have to account
for it on the day of judgement. For out of your own
mouth you will be acquitted; out of your own mouth you
will be condemned. (21)

In light of this passage, the critical debate
surrounding the story, and the fact that language
prompts--and makes Siegel an accomplice to--Loon's
massacre, it seems clear that "Mortality and Mercy" 
compels us to answer the following question: How
responsible are we (Siegel, Pynchon, the reader) for
our words?

--to be cont'd ... 



		
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