ATDTDA - petroleurs, p.19

[Monte Davis]

 David Morris:

> I agree that he doesn't make simplistic morality tales, and thus the good 
> guys aren't necessarily guiltless.  But I wouldn't say they are the
equivalent 
> of his bad guys.

Nor would I say the latter, and if I implied it I sure screwed up. Pynchon
doesn't preach --  like all writers, he's god in his own creation. But like
very few, he's really really good at it -- making *our* judgments about that
world damn near as challenging and problematic as they are Out Here.  

Fopr example, if you're at p. 380, I can suggest without spoilage that few
things about the book are more interesting than the very different moral
consequences for Webb and for Erlys of "being a bad parent." I mean, talk
about "taking your living presence away" -- how 'bout falling in love with
the magician and abandoning both your infant daughter and sweet solid Merle,
who took you in when you were pregnant, and raises Dally alone quite
splendidly? So now you and Dally are making friends, calmly talking it over
as you fold bedsheets? This is the same book, the same author, the same
moral *universe* as Webb's story? Well, yes -- and the fun is in figuring
out how he pulls it off.

And likewise I can advise you to watch out for developments a few hundred
pages down the line. Not surprisingly in a book with (at least) two of
everything, Webb's exit will be twinned by another death by torture -- and
again, it's as different as different can be.