Which side is he on?

[Terrance]

Death, no idle prankster, is always,  in the book, just outside the
window. The cosmic humor is in Gnossos's blundering attempts to make
some kind of early arrangement with Thanatos, to find some kind of
hustle that will get him out of the mortal contract we're all stuck
with. Nothing he tries works, but even funnier than that, he's really
too much in love with being alive, with dope, sex, rock 'n' roll---he
feels so good he has to take chances, has to keep tempting death, only
half-realizing that the more intensely he lives, the better the odds of
his number coming up. 

Last came, and last did go
the green horseman beyond the pale 
libation tipped his cup
he took to the white mountains 




Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> 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 ...
> 
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
> http://photos.yahoo.com/