Repost: "The Big One"

[David Payne]

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.
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