Pynchon's layered moral vision or Send in the Clowns, pp 678ff (again)

[Mark Kohut]

I want to argue with myself: first, 'moralism' is the wrong word in my post of yesterday. That word, as I confirmed, implies  preaching morals, spouting convential maxims and moralisms. Not Pynchon, of course.......

I would amend that heading to say Pynchon's layered moral vision. [I just did]

A-and here is, perhaps, another layer....more of his richness beyond simplifying
..............something found while exploring Luhmann and the British stage and bloodlust, etc.   

It comes from a book exploring "critical theology" after thinkers such as Baudrillard, Lyotard
and others. The writer, Gregory Baum, summarizes a position of Baudrillard's that I think may be explanatorily
relevant to this section about the Jack the Ripper musical:

     "Baudrillard speaks ironically of the "stupid' masses who refuse to listen to
      rational argument....such as the critical rationality of the left........This "stupidity"
      is the glory of the masses and the source of their freedom, [Baudrillard would say]. What
      the masses, the people, really desire is drama, celebration and conviviality. Foot-
      ball matches [cricket matches in AtD] and rock festivals involve and excite more
      than...."    

Without needing Baudrillard's words, I might argue that TRP believes this about "the people", about lots of 'rational argument', 
 about "us", as is evident throughout his oeuvre yet TRP also believes a lot of the people's desires have been shaped
badly by aspects of the world we all live in....
 
 Agree? Not?
 
Kai wrote:
 
"Doubles work as bilocations on the level of persons. So Bilocation appears to be the
missing link. Interestingly enough, Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems considers
the emergence of doubles or Doppelgänger in modern literature since the Romantik
(think of E.T.A. Hoffmann!) as an indicator that modern society has switched from first
order observations to second order observations. So art, like other outdifferenciated
functional systems, is according to Luhmann not about observing the world as such but
about observing observers. "
 
great connections which fed this:
 
I called Neville and Nigel nice guys, not precise, they are clowns here.....with the seltzer bottle
twitting the T.W.I.T.s...........N & N as clowns brings back the social world as circus motif
in AtD, yes?......(M. Moorcock, writer, publisher who published early TRP story(ies) called
AtD a massive circus novel in his review, check it out at the wiki)....."see buskers pranced and
spun before the theatre queues, etc."........(Cf. "It's all theatre now"--GR).....gay street circus
and theater entertainment.........which is a MUSICAL based on the story/actions of Jack the Ripper
one of the first famous secret serial killers (of strangers) who, I believe, is later linked in AtD to 
the "serial killings"  by the Nazis and others in History.........
 
A--and polite bourgeois English society turns Jack into musical entertainment!..... as Pynchon observes
the observers of mass murderers in the world......and sees a circus, not a "proper' response..[comment; refute]
but a kind of neuropathic response..............societal responses that should never allow such evasion of the reasons
for a mass murderer are glorified........turned into fun.........society's moral nerve endings dulled, so to speak.
 
More two cents,
Mark 



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