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

[Mark Kohut]

too far imho, as my attempts to explicate show.....Coetzee, like the artist he is, has reasons for EVERYTHING, including why Doestoevsky, why differences from the real Doestoevsky, why every scene, etc. Otherwise, he
writes a different book.

It is like taking away layers of meaning from TRPs choices or every third word from the real Doestoevsky's words.

I might say "richly ambiguous" where you say "problematic" and say even if it is "turtles all the way down" --see wikipedia---holding up Coetzee's empirical world, there is still that world.


--- On Sun, 11/9/08, Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: TMoP Chap 16, pity and a heart-to-heart
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>, markekohut at yahoo.com
> Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008, 8:46 PM
> "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"....