TMoP Chap 16, pity and a heart-to-heart

[Richard Ryan]

"An age of acting, this, an age of disguise." --- Great quote!  And a primary source for my repeated point about this novel: all talk about Coetzee and the historical Dostoevsky (as well as the novel The Possessed/The Demons) is HIGHLY problematic given that nothing in the text suggests any faith in the reliability of texts, or their ability to point accurately back to a verifiable historical reality..... 


--- On Sun, 11/9/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: TMoP Chap 16, pity and a heart-to-heart
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008, 6:08 PM
> p. 195 "How clever of Nechaev to have forewarned him
> against pity! ...pity for a child alone in the sea, fighting
> and drowning....--D.
> 
> Anti-Christian Nietzsche thought pity a useless emotion--to
> be eliminated
> as much as we can. 
> 
> "When was it last that words could be trusted to
> travel from heart-to-heart?...I am reminded of the scene in
> "Against the Day" back in the Balkan town with
> Vlado.....when TRP seems to show heart-to-heart encounters
> even clashes....
> 
> "An age of acting, this, an age of
> disguise."---as if D. was articulating, visioning TRP
> (or others--Baudelaire, Benjamin) who say this about
> 'the modern age"....