the Merle center

[Bekah]

I'd really rather have a moral book without a center (such as AtD) than a center without empathetically based morals (Lolita).   I think this is a personal preference - I realize I have added a criterion to  the moral issue because one could possibly say that Lolita is a moral book - nevertheless,  I don't like it - I can't detach myself from the issues.  

Wouldn't you say that Frank Traverse is a sort of moral center?  Or is his presence not pervasive enough?  Is there a moral center for each "section?"   I'm thinking that there is certainly an immoral center (of sorts)  in Scarsdale Vibe and sons so their opposite might be the Traverses.  ?  

Bekah


On Feb 28, 2012, at 7:16 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> I've harped on this too many times before, but the reason ATD falls short (for me) is that there's no protagonist.  It's not that a protagonist provides a "moral" center, so much as a point of reference.  Slothrop isn't the first person we meet in GR, and he leaves early, but his journey is our journey.  Oedipa and Doc Sportello have conventional protagonist roles, which is why COL49 and IV are probably the most accessible of Pynchon's books (I love the first, dislike the second).  V. and M&D both have dual protagonists, which is better than no protagonist.  Only ATD stands out as having none.  I can understand why he did it - it's a reflection of the time it takes place, when quantum theory is upending Newtonian physics, Europe is fragmenting, etc. The center no longer holds.  But it's hard to read a book that has no central character.  We have no place in it.  I really do think that's what Pynchon's driving at - he wants us to feel as dislocated in time and space as his multitude of characters do.  But I just didn't want to spend that much time not caring.  I prefer to join Slothrop or Oedipa in their paranoid journeys, than to be jostled around like a random gas molecule for 1000+ pages.
> 
> Laura
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Keith Davis 
> Sent: Feb 27, 2012 11:21 PM 
> To: barbie gaze 
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org 
> Subject: Re: the Merle center 
> 
> Seems to me...(letting myself off the hook right here at the beginning), there isn't a "moral center character" here, and that's a long way from GR. Maybe that's what I'm missing here (Laura?). It's a great read (listen), but in the end, who is the "hero", anti- or otherwise? This is my second time through it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip both times, but there's no clear "jolt" like at the end of GR. Maybe that's the point? Or, maybe there is no point, or no single point? Late night ravings from a non lit-crit fictionophile...
> 
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 7:21 PM, barbie gaze <barbiegaze at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.upne.com/1-58465-122-9.html
> 
> 
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 2/27/2012 10:13 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> Lots here, thinking on all of it but picking up first the Lew is a cypher remark.
>>  
>> Yes, Lew is....he is presented to us as driven out of his old life, evev getting a new identity (if that one person's
>> remark about betraying his identity is to be taken at face-value)...he has no backstory in this novel.......why?
>>  
>> If his Unknown Sin is a metaphor for Original Sin, then his new life is to find his way in the real world, the world,
>> according to the Original Sin myth, of Aging and Death [those words in caps turn up in the later discussion of
>> time travel immortality]. He is now out of the psychic garden of Eden, if that makes any sense and his quest is to
>> understand that---or just accept it? And that is thematic? (I say Yes )
>>  
>> To speak to Bled Welder (and others), the moral center of a novel sorta means the character, if there is one, who
>> sees reliably [nods to Alice W.] in a 'what's real?' world. Lew is characterized as very observant. He seems to report
>> honestly, even about his confusions and ignorance. As a detective, he hunts for facts and truth. (Pugnax accepts him aboard
>> The Inconvenience, no little thing if you remember an upcoming bit during the Chums' crisis of Authority when we learn that Pugnax
>> would know of any turncoats in their midst).
>>  
>> Lew interacts with the major other plotlines: the Chums, Anarchists, (some of) the English  events, and with the Traverses.---hence his
>> centrality.  He asks "moral' questions, such as about 'the innocent bourgeoisie". I take his questioning of some anarchists' beliefs
>> as Columbo--like; he knows the simple human rights and wrongs so they condemn themselves with their answers.
>> He gets some of P's thematic'answers'...with the toilet reading at the end, for example, and with much more. 
>>  
>> Is he called a pilgrim further along and I can't remember or is that what an early reader/writer has said? (about him or about
>> us, the readers?) Anyway, he is like a secular pilgrim trying to understand (some of) the world this novel purports to illumine.  
>> 
> 
> How would you gentlemen feel about elevating not Lew but Cyprian to the "moral center" of the novel.
> 
> Although I think we'd have to admit that the idea of a "moral center" is pretty problematic in modern culture and society (since Jane Austen, say).
> 
> Fragmentation, role playing, other-directed-ness , being thrust about by the demands of modern existence--but no matter--let's just say that any "moral center" worth considering will have to involve a change to better from worse and that such change will have to be based on real rather than surreal events in the novel's character development. 
> 
> Pynchon isn't known for developing his characters in realistic terms, although he's shown improvement over time--compare Lake with Katje--but Cyprian really does undergo profound moral change for the better in the course of the story.
> 
> From working for the British Foreign Office or Secret Service, where only the most pragmatic considerations apply to one's ethical behavior, to a monastic vocation, where goodness as it is common understood by all men and women can reign unhindered by the exigencies of modern existence.  
> 
> But again, isn't there something wrong with this picture.
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>>  
>> 
>> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
>> Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 10:32 PM
>> Subject: the Merle center
>> 
>> as I have tried by the time-honored method (in which one protesteth too mucheth) to make the case (by indirection) for Lew as moral center (or centre)
>> 
>> and now append a caveat - I did nothing to prove Lew wasn't very helpful to the Cohen
>> 
>> but moving on to a gentle compare / contrast
>> 
>> Lew - conscious of sin
>> fulfills a program of redemption with Drave et al
>> does work for White City 
>> redeems himself by leaving it
>> finds a non-destructive use for dynamite (it gets him high!)
>> survives a bomb
>> learns the intricacies of the Tarot and pursues bombthrowers in London
>> sensitive to the beauties of eventide in Chicago
>> 
>> now for...
>> Merle - passionate about photography
>> marries a pregnant widow
>> accepts her betrayal with some grace
>> raises Dally a little too libertarianly some might say
>> falls in with the Candlebrow crowd 
>> works on inventions and suchlike
>> makes friends with ball lightning
>> finds ginseng
>> 
>> sensitive to Dalley ("As Merle watched her sleep, an unmanly warmth about the eyeballs would surprise him.  Her hearth-colored hair in a careless child's snarl.  She was somewhere off wandering those dangerous dark fields, maybe even finding there some version of himself, of Erlys, that he'd never get to hear about, among the sorrowful truths, being lost, being found, flying, journeying to places too detailed to be anything but real, meeting the enemy, dying, being born over and over....He wanted to find a way in, to look out for her at least, keep her from the worst if he could....)
>> 
>> and capable of seguing from appreciation of a sunset all the way into a "Barkis-is-willing" moment - p 506-7 
>> "You could smell crude oil in the air.  The first wheelfolk of summer, in bright sweaters and caps and striped socks, went whirring gaily in battalion strength along the great viaduct on tandem bicycles, which seemed to be a city craze that year.  Bicycle bells going nonstop, the massed choruses of them, in all sorts of ragged harmonies, loud as church bells on Sunday though maybe with a finer texture.  Roughnecks went in and out of saloon doors and sometimes windows.  Elms cast deep shade over yards and streets, forests of elms back when there were still elms in Cleveland, making visible the flow of the breezes, iron railings surrounding the villas of the well-off, roadside ditches full of white clover, a sunset that began early and stayed late, growing to a splendor that had her and Merle gazing at it in disbelief, and then at each other....
>> ""It ain't a Euclid Avenue mansion, you may've noticed that already, but it's warm and solid built, there's a leaf-spring suspension of my own design that you'd think you were riding on a cloud."
>> ""Sure, well being an angel I'm used to that."  But the brightest part of that luridly exploding childhood sky was now right behind her face, and some of her hair was loose, and she could detect in his gaze enough of what he must be seeing, and they both fell silent."
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