Repost: The Big One

[David Payne]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 (23:44:27 -0400), Laura (kelber at mindspring.com) wrote:

> If you're expecting an impassioned defense of TRP's ability to draw well-rounded characters, you won't be getting it from me.

Well, no, actually, I wasn't, which is why I said it was a joke, satire.

And that's twice I've apparently unintentionally implied something that I did not mean to convey.

I'll try asking questions for the third time and then just shut up, which seems, perhaps, to be desired.

Sticking with the topic at hand, don't most writers create rounded characters by presenting a moral dilemma and then demonstrating the character's inner struggle and the resulting moral evolution?

Does Pynchon do this?

If not, why? If so, where and why? (Some postings have already answered this as "yes"; specifically, both Laura and Mark pointed to Frank and the train crash on page 985.)

Finally, does Pynchon's moral view point extend beyond the reaction of his characters' individual personal reactions to their individual dilemmas?

Please take my comments a face value, b/c my son bought ice cream from an ice-cream truck for the first time yesterday. Boy-oh-boy was he ever excited to learn that people actually drive around in trucks full of ice cream on hot summer days, trying to unload their merchandise.


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