AtD gold

[Mark Kohut]

Yeahp. I think my earnestness, that too-seriousness, might make me oversee stupidly Merle's joke about Dally. 
Merle, maybe, is more the entrepreneurial type of American---but he does want a big score---contrasted to most
others in the novel.....when TRP has a character believe in the possibility of alchemy, he shows he wants it yet
can't get that it is impossible....
 
Merle works hard, a hardscrabble-like existience as a single dad, learning new skills all the time, a lifelong, self-educated 
worker......


________________________________
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: AtD gold



Mark Kohut wrote:

David is right and I am firming up a longer defense of my moral reading.
>It too must take into account what is 'beyond good and evil and
>all binaries' or it is my weakness in the reading.....
>
>

Lew and Merle, maybe not obviously Iceland Spar-ly opposed, but Lew watches everybody else, whereas Merle creates his own rather virtuous (imho) world out of scientific enthusiasms, ball lightning, photography, time itself...

(I don't think he really meant to sell Dalley, that was just a pleasantry to shock Noseworth, and he's hardly mercenary - basically as it says somewhere, all year he works day jobs to be able to afford a month at Candlebrow) 

Vibe and Webb, obvious opposition by their chosen places w/r/t class...
Werfner and Renfrew, by their analogous positions in different national war-machines

Reef macho man / Cyprian effete dandy occupy different poles in a masculinity continuum...

the ellipses proliferate, pairs of foci abound...
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