ATDTDA - petroleurs, p.19

[Charles Albert]

Possible spoilers for those not past pg 350....
















and Erlys is, for the most part,a "mechanical" mother, staying occupied with
the administrative side of housekeeping.
In spite of being a homewrecker and an itinerant prestidigitator, Zombini is
clearly a powerful and positive influence on his brood.

To suggested that Scarsdale and Webb are 'twinned' doesn't oblige a direct
analogy........I find it paradoxical that the same flaw is attached to men
whose energies appear to be harnessed to 'progress' of two conflicting, but
nevertheless convergent, kinds.

As Monte persuasively insists Pynchon won't indulge "easy judgement", and he
has become even more adept at confounding the earnest desire on the part of
the reader to do so.

Damn is he good.......




love,
cfa

On 1/30/07, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
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