Which side is he on?

[Dave Monroe]

With perhaps negligible reservations, agreed ...

--- Toby G Levy <tobylevy at juno.com> wrote:
> 
> What I see when I read Pynchon, is that there are
> certain characters that seek to celebrate life, to
> enhance the enjoyment of life by those around them
> and who generally do no harm to anyone around them.
> To my way of reading, these are the characters we
> are supposed to like, whose conduct the author
> endorses.

"Endorses" might not be quite the right word here, but
... but all this doesn't necessarily prevent said
characters from, well, fucking up either ...
 
> Then there are the characters who impose their will
> on others for the purpose of increasing their
> enjoyment of life AT THE EXPENSE of others, who
> therefore suffer and die more miserably than they
> would without the interference of the "bad"
> characters, who the author presents in such a
> way that the normal reader would dislike. In Pynchon
> these "bad" characters are usually members of
> the "system" whereas the "good" characters are
> usually the powerless, the preterite, etc.

On such "enjoyment" (excellent word choice here, by
the way), see, in general and/or particular, the
hardest working man in Slovenian psychoanalytic
cultural theory, Slavoj Zizek.  Viz. ...

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavojzizek.html

This I haven't read ...

Zizek, Slavoj.  For They Know Not What They Do:
   Enjoyment As a Political Factor.  2nd ed.
   London and New York: Verso, 2002 [1991].

http://www.versobooks.com/books/tuvwxyz/xyz-titles/zizek_for_they.shtml

But this, of all things, might be of use here ...

Zizek, Slavoj.  The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime:
   On David Lynch's Lost Highway.  Seattle:
   U of Washington P, 2000.

http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ZIZART.html

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0102&msg=53009&sort=date

See Zizek on "Mr. Eddy" (Robert Loggia).  I've
suggested before that this might be a proudctive place
to start in discussing GR's Blicero as well ...

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