IVIV, more lost innocence. Is IV a Paradise Lost? p.38

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Mark:

> "end of a certain kind of innocence, that thing about 
> straightworld people that kept you from hating them totally, 
> that real desire sometimes to help.'
> SPOILER question. tie this in with the riff at the novel's 
> end about "one of the few things he'd ever seen anyone, except 
> hippies, do for free".
> Doing for free? Elaborate re TRPs vision. Link to anarchism in 
> practice. Link to the Chums. 
 
Think I'd rather link to Fleetwood and Stray. Fleetwood tells us:
 
"I used to read Dickens as a child. The cruelty didn't surprise 
me, but I did wonder at the moments of uncompensated kindness,
which I had never observed outside the pages of fiction. In any
world I knew, it was a time-honored principle to do nothing for
free." (AtD, 167)
 
Late in AtD, Stray seems to make this very "uncompensated kindness"
her way of life:
 
"It wasn't exactly a religious experience, but somehow, a little at
a time, she had found herself surrendering to her old need to take
care of people. Not for compensation, certainly not for thanks. Her
first rule became "Don't thank me." Her second was "Don't take credit
for anything that turns out well." One day she woke up understanding 
clear as the air that as long as a person was willing to forgo credit,
there were very few limits on the good it became possible to do." 
(AtD, 976)
 
-- and she imparts this philosophy to Jesse as well: "She had taught
him never to claim credit for anything if he could help it" (AtD, 1008).
 
The cruel irony is, of course, that Stray's moments of uncompensated
kindness are exactly like those observed by Fleetwood in the work of
Dickens: The don't take really place "outside the pages of fiction," 
but are caught in the pages of AtD. 
 
It seems Doc shares some of Stray's ideas. Doc may not be an angel, 
and he may have his flaws, but his decision to save Coy and give 
Amethyst her dad back does seem to be just such a moment of uncompensated 
kindness. It would certainly be difficult to argue that Doc in this 
particular instance acts out of anything but pure kindness, sentimental
PI that he is.

 
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