Repost: The Big One

[kelber at mindspring.com]

No, you're not alone in seeing the moral nuance, Mark.  When he writes of IG Farben or the Ludlow Massacre, there's not a whole lot of room for moral nuance.  I don't know of any essays written by anyone (correct me someone if I'm wrong) that show that the Rockefeller's actions in the Ludlow massacre were based on a genuinely moral outlook.  You don't need to be a moralizing prig to come down on the side of the miners. When we're talking about whether TRP's writing is morally flat or un-nuanced, the implication is that he's somewhat of a prig or at least a knee-jerker.

When he writes about WWI or the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (Madero presidency) he's aware that there are no good guys to side with.  In the sequence where Frank dynamites a moving train in a collision course with Federales, knowingly causing untold human and animal deaths, he's become uncomfortably aware that he's going through the motions (and deadly motions they are); he no longer knows or much cares what he's fighting for.  Then TRP's morality kicks in: the morality of the state of grace, the Buddhist viewpoint:

(p. 985):  " ... suddenly the day had become extradimensional, the country shifted, was no longer the desert abstraction of a map but was speed, air rushing, the smell of smoke and steam, time whose substance grew more condensed as each tick came faster and faster, all perfectly inseparable from Frank's certainty that jumping or not jumping was no longer the point, he belonged to what was happening ..."

Faced with the moral chaos of WWI, the Mexican devolution, the post 9-11 world, the only choice (I think he's saying) is to view the world in its proper perspective, as it is, nothing more.  This may be moralizing, but it's neither flat or un-nuanced.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Jul 13, 2008 10:34 AM
>To: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: RE: Repost: "The Big One"
>
>As, it seems, the lone contrarian voice, I will risk being wrong again:
>
>There is as much 'moral nuance' in "Against the Day", at least, as in 
>almost any writer. 
>
>Presenting such nuances may be one of TRPs deepest themes here, i.e. a vision of life in History that has a fuller range---see Light Over the Ranges---than in any other of his books. 
>
>
>--- On Sun, 7/13/08, David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: RE: Repost: "The Big One"
>> To: malignd at aol.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Date: Sunday, July 13, 2008, 4:12 AM
>> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 (17:18:29 -0400), malignd at aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> <Very little reading into is called for.
>> 
>> That's funny sh^t, man, but, umm, just for the record,
>> when I said "morally flat," I did not mean
>> morally void, I meant morally un-nuanced.
>> 
>> Like, for example, a moral vision that collapses everyone
>> into Nazis or Abbie Hoffman--that's morally flat. As is
>> a vision that sees Capitalism as the Right for all Wrongs.
>> Or a vision that sees Lex Luther as the archnemesis of
>> Superman. Or a vision that sees the Jews as the evil that
>> must be exterminated by the Supermen.
>> 
>> Flattening morality is a common trick, practiced by
>> revolutionaries (Public Enemy? Bush? ), the status quo
>> (Reagan? Bush?), satarists (Bush? Dante?), and simpletons
>> (Homer Simpson? Bush?).
>> 
>> Moral nuance is also a common trick, supposedly practiced
>> by con men, lovers, and novelists.
>> 
>> I am perfectly willing to concede the point (i.e., Pynchon
>> creates novels that place characters in a morally-flat
>> universe) if faced with a nuanced (or sinister) argument,
>> but--my thinking right now--it seems to me that Pynchon
>> often flattens morality into good guys vs. bad guys as a
>> satirist's (sp? -- one who creates satire?) tool in
>> order to issue moral clarity and comic relieve.
>> 
>> I dig Pynchon, but I do not turn to his novels for solace
>> when I feel temptation, a morally gray world tugging me on
>> all three sides ... his characters fight the powers that
>> be, or they die, or they *are* (gasp!) the powers that be. 
>> 
>> So till sweet death do us part, may Dog have mercy. But
>> don't tell nobody.