ATDTDA - petroleurs, p.19

[Monte Davis]

David Morris:

>  One might say [Webb] was in love with the crusade 
> and its methods (and thus a bit selfish). Reef on the 
> other hand is mostly moved by guilt

A bit? A *BIT*?!? No, Webb was *epically* selfish  -- in his own way, as
selfish as Scarsdale Vibe. (I suspect that's why the book's birefringence
brings Kit into uneasy friendship with Fleetwood Vibe, a guilt-motivated
double of his own brother. You can run to New Haven, but you can't hide.)

Don't fall for a trap P sets over and over. He gives us plenty of rope to
believe Vibe's selfishness is unredeemed because it's all about money <yuk>
and power <phooey>, but Webb's is sorta kinda OK because it's In the Cause
of the Oppressed <hurrah>. 

But I don't think *he* believes that. I think he's as pitiless as Eudora
Welty, who wrote in _Losing Battles_: "...there is only one way of depriving
the ones you love -- taking your living presence away from theirs... No one
alive can ever in honor forget that wrong, which outshines shame, and is not
to be forgiven until it has been righted."

Webb doesn't get a chance to right it. P. 96:

"Thinking he saw something wistful on Deuce's face, though it could've been
end-of-shift exhaustion, Webb said, 'Too bad my daughter's flown the nest, I
could've introduced you two.'

No he couldn't. What was he thinking anyway? She was gone. Bitch was gone. .
. .

'Thanks. Single life ain't that bad . . .' Deuce trailed off, as if it was
something he didn't want to get into.

'It's a mixed blessing, son....' "

Webb "took his living presence away" from his own children, froze them out
and drove them away, because he was too busy rendering justice -- and the
payback for that couldn't be more unkind (or in kind). We know how Pynchon
loves mines and strata: under all the ironies here is a stone-cold, Dantean
core of _lex talionis_.