TPPM MMV The Gnostic Pynchon

[Ghetta Life]

Thanks Dave (& Kai).  This really is the point of the story, NOT that Siegel 
may or may not have been a detached psychopath with no feelings for his 
fellow man.  That bit may or may not be a part of the story, but if it was 
the POINT of the story then I ask the question "Who cares?"  Is Siegel's 
psyche really of any concern?  OK, it wasn't nice of him to let all those 
people be slaughtered, but Pynchon wrote the story, and his concern was the 
SITUATION foremost.  The characters are secondary excuses for the situation 
of the party and the events which happen there.  It is completely a morality 
tale (a very obvious one) in which Pynchon condemns his first incarnation of 
the Whole Sick Crew, by means of a very contrived character and overtly 
laying on a twisted take on Conrad's HOD.  As a story it is only interesting 
in the ways in which it is a percusor for all the themes listed in this very 
fine analysis.

Ghetta

>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>
>From: lorentzen-nicklaus@[omitted]
>.... the point in 'mortality and mercy' is that debby
>and her crew themselves image the savage and amoral
>forces that oppress irving and starve him of his
>spiritual sustenance - thus, the gnostic reversal by
>which the victim turns avenger and oppressor, denying
>the humanity in whose name he had suffered. his mass
>murder and cannibalism are a barbaric thrust from the
>heart of nature's darkness against the artificial
>darkness fashioned by a decadent civilization. as
>'father confessor' (p. 212) to these neurotic
>bacchanals, siegal grants this carnage the status of
>ritual purification, compounding the religious ironies
>already present with an admixture of christian heresy.
>the 'still small jesuit voice' (p. 213) in his head -
>a voice that he associates with machiavellian
>Realpolitik - urges him to go ahead with the 'miracle'
>that is now 'in his hands' by acquiescing in the
>slaughter. through a grotesque - and essentially
>gnostic - reversal of values, he will be bringing
>'these parishioners ... a very tangible salvation. a
>miracle involving a host, true, but like no holy
>eucharist' (p. 212).

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