Repost: "The Big One"

[David Payne]

On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 (22:20:21 +0000), Robin (robinlandseadel at comcast.net) wrote: 

>[quoting Malignd] . . . .but pessimism and morality are not mutually exclusive. GR is
> pessimistic, overall, but it is also very moralistic. I'd argue that
> if there is a problem with Pynchon's moralism, it is that it is, for
> me, anyway, not terribly sophisticated. He is fluid in sophisticated
> ideas, surely; but his moral judgements are black and white.
> His paranoid connection of one thing to another--e.g., nazism to
> IG Farben to Royal Dutch Shell to Ciba Geigy--indicts everything
> and everyone equally. There's guilt to go around, but Royal Dutch
> Shell is not the third reich. . . .[end of quoting Malignd]
>
> I would disagree with you on this particular point and would point to
> Weissmann's tarot as the narrator's true feelings on the subject.
> I simply cannot see an author documenting so much anarchist
> history without some devotion to the cause. Certain themes pop
> up in all of the man's books, over and over. They skew hard left.
> Maybe that's the part you don't like.

Hold on -- can you expound on what you mean by "[I] would point to Weissmann's tarot as the narrator's true feelings on the subject"?

Because it seems to me that the Pynchon's novels *are* pretty much populated by good guys and bad guys, the right choice and the wrong choice. Malignd said it better than me: "He is fluid in sophisticated ideas, surely; but his moral judgements are black and white."

I'd argue that M&D presents a more nuanced judgement on the morality of its characters than the other novels, but I think that the point is well made: Pynchon's characters inhabit a morally flat universe. Hence, perhaps, the common criticism that his characters are flat.

What exactly is the disagreement here?





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