CoL49 (5)

[rich]

On 6/23/09, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>  It
> may be that Oedipa's final state of numbed insecurity has to do with
> the difference between her and Mucho, her inabiliy to fully escape
> the logical boundaries of the tower. She cleaves to a kind of mental
> control, individuality, logic,   and retains these things at the
> expense of the kind of  healing and openness that Mucho  has entered,
> not without  some loss on his part which she is wary of.
_________
I see your point and don't disagree necessarily but Mucho may be free
but to me he's less human--not that I think its more real or right to
be the suffering sad sack that he was but the new Mucho is creepy.
>
>   It is interesting that Mucho is the one
> character that I am aware of who Pynchon carries into another book.
> He seems to embody a kind of American version of the Buddhist path
> characterized by nonviolence and a kind of not this , not this
> passing through and leaving behind of what is nonessential. His great
> gift is his hearing which generates contemplation an action. He looks
> from the outside like a caricature but his inner life is wild and
> once liberated from his troubled ego  wonderfully fearless and
> directed outwardly as much as inwardly.
_________
and then you have Pig Bodine, a horrorshow yes but the man is honest
in his debauchery. Mucho in Vineland is hardly liberated, no? from LSD
to a cokehead, times change, what was sheer liberation becomes another
series of short-lived highs and long-lived bummers (not to mention
that drippy nose)

rich