ATDDTA (6) 166 - 170 a

[Tore Rye Andersen]

bekah quoted:

>167: 20   Fleetwood:  "I used to read Dickens as a child. The cruelty
>didn't surprise me, but I did wonder at the moments of uncompensated
>kindness, which I had never observed outside the pages of fiction. "

- and Monte commented:

>Perhaps setting up an echo for the book's last page? "For every wish to
>come true would mean that in the known Creation, good unsought and un-
>compensated would have evolved somehow, to become at least more access-
>ible to us."

This uncompensated kindness/good is put into practice by Stray and others 
during the strike in Colorado. Doc Turnstone tells Frank that:

"There's a sort of informal plexus of people working as best they can to 
help the strikers out. Food, medicine, ammunition, doctoring. Everything's 
voluntary. Nobody makes a profit or gets paid, not even credit or 
thank-yous." (997)

And in the tent camp we hear of this little credo which Stray has taught her 
son Jesse:

"She had taught him never to claim credit for anything if he could help it." 
(1008)

Kindness has always been an extremely positive force for Pynchon, and one 
gets the feeling that the author puts more stock into small. local 
kindnesses than in over-arching and idealistic political projects. Kindness 
may not be as radical a force of political change as, say, fully fledged 
Anarchism, but it's something, and if universally practiced, the world would 
be an infinitely better place.

In his afterword to 'Lolita', Nabokov defined art as "curiosity, tenderness, 
kindness, ecstasy", and I've always felt that this definition was a pretty 
good definition of Pynchon's art as well. One of the most beautiful 
instances of kindness in Pynchon's work has for me always been the 
relationship between Slothrop and Tantivy. During an awkward moment in a 
conversation between the two friends, we hear that "kindness is a sturdy 
enough ship for these oceans", and that "when it's really counted, Tantivy 
hasn't ever let him down" (GR, 21; and when Tantivy disappears, "Slothrop 
misses him, not just as an ally, but as a presence, a kindness." (GR, 210). 
Even the official obituary speaks of Tantivy's "kindness of heart" (252).
At another point in GR, during the singing-duel witnessed by Tchitcherine, 
kindness is described as some sort of glowing force:

"Now and then he glances over at the old aqyn, who only appears to be 
sleeping. In fact he radiates for the singers a sort of guidance. It is 
kindness. It can be felt as unmistakably as the heat from the embers." (GR, 
357)

Kindness - or more precisely, what one of Pynchon's disciples David Foster 
Wallace calls "raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness" (Infinite Jest, 203) - 
is a seemingly modest and innocuous force, but in the wise words of Darth 
Vader, one should never underestimate the power of this Force in Pynchon's 
(or Dickens', Nabokov's, and Wallace's) work.

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