the Merle center

[Mark Kohut]

 I personally am loving all the recent posts, including the nay-sayers, in that light across the full range of plisters, which nay-sayers may have sparked the Return of the UnderExpressed (about AtD) esp bandwraith, Bled, Joseph T.
and Michael Bailey's  (I would reply to all the posts but I'll look like more of a narcissistic idjit than I do...)


Re: MBs
Terrif post, imho. So much to say. Yes, to that definition of ONE
moral center. (glad somebody is keeping THAT alive). But there might
be more than one in this book, for moral meaning we must also  focus on Cyprian as Paul M. pushes
 and the author is invested in Lew and the Chums' thread bigtime.
 
 I have notes on some possible reflections of women in AtD too. 
 
I have some differences with you on Merle as 
anyone might about a character or another human being....but it is also because
you characterized him so much ....but I think it is the
best case and a great one to be made.
 
He is more like Everyman, yet steadily heroic, than is Lew....
 
I think he IS presented as a tinker, that American workingman archetype, 
 who makes a living however he can, a good man, who uses and is used
by the modern world. (By "is used", I think that he believes in some
things re aspects of the modern world that the 'author' doesn't. But, still struggling with that)
 
 P.S. that recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Tinker, does borrow in one scene at least, some strands from that rich fabric
that is GR, if I read it OK. 

And LOVE that ending about how you---me, too---most of us readers
might be more like Lew than Merle. Part of TRP's point? A...and, the Chums'
growth??
 
 
 
 


________________________________
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 8:42 PM
Subject: Re: the Merle center

hate to borrow from Bill Clinton, because his fund come from the World
Bank and you know those guys are Shylocks...

but it seems to me, you have to define what the word - in this case,
"moral center" - means...

now if alice were posting, I'd need to defend my notion that a certain
amount of subjectivity is ok - even ineluctable - here.
i.e. what am I looking for in a moral center?

Outside the academy, that is.  I'm actually rather conservative in
that respect: if there aren't agreed-upon conventions there, how can
we assign letter grades?  a-and without letter grades, how would
people know what career they want?

but I think you can formulate an individualistic read based on
criteria that you make up for yourself (or more likely, customize some
prefab ones for the purpose) and even write interestingly and possibly
even usefully thereabout.

So, I did Google moral center and skimmed a couple things.  But for my
purposes, the idea here of moral center that I will develop is
actually developed from Merle...

Basically, and this is an enveloping concept sans elaboration (just
throwing it out there), ie stepping back another remove so we have
text -> Merle -> moral center -> what I am looking for when I read AtD
or any novel

and that would be a notion of "what's going on" (in the world, in the
book, in the author's mind)

(actually could step back further but it's already going to be hard to
define moral center and suggest Merle in say 3 more paragraphs in a
post already uncomfortably long)

but this idea of reading to find out what's going on indicates a
liberal turn of mind, that is, I want a chunk of text artfully wrought
by someone of obvious intelligence, in order to ruminate and develop
my own ideas against and further develop my picture of what's going on
by either agreeing or disagreeing (or both) with what the writer is
driving at (goes without saying that trying to figure that out is part
of the fun) --

so, in AtD with its large cast of characters, the appropriate moral
center would be somebody who takes the appropriate position on all the
issues that arise --- the class struggle, revenge, technology, love --
by virtue of who they are...drawing from a blurb on the jacket of a
Camus book (which was the only thing I brought away from that book, I
humbly admit), somebody who impresses me with "the decency of his
impulses."

Merle's jib's cut, methinks, fills the bill.
a) class struggle - early on, the text talks about a professor for
whom Merle works as a lab assistant, referring to him as "his friend".
Basically, naively, like pacifism, this is the only way to defuse
class hostility and survive -- to consider employers and employees as
friends.
b) revenge - in the absence of justice from the legal system, Merle
provides Frank with a snapshot of Deuce and some good, if obvious,
advice.  Like Lew in this respect, he throws in with the injured
parties to a very limited extent because of his own sense of justice.
c) now Mark has made some telling points w/r/t the destructive aspects
of technology, electric lighting, trains usw, but Merle uses
photography to consort with a naked lady in nature, adapts some retro
tech to make a nice rolling home for himself that travels on his own
timetable, isn't blind to the charms of wood- and herb-craft during
his ginseng gathering, and engages at every step with not just the
trappings of techno-capability but with the concepts behind technical
progress to develop his mind, conversation, friendships...
d) love - like Whitman, there are suggestions that Merle enjoys a
"jolly, bodily life" mostly in his younger days, with a variety of
partners, but he also extends his heart to commit to Erlys when she
needs it, and takes loving care of Dalley until she's grown up enough
to find her own way.  There is more than a suggestion in the book that
love includes the ability to let go, and this too he does when
appropriate.
In sum, Merle is the person in the novel whom I would most like to be.
(which is yet another stipulation for moral center that seems relevant
To borrow from George Clinton (a more pleasant prospect), he's an
Atomic Dog, he gets up for the downstroke, he gets on the good foot...

addendum: Unfortunately, I'm a bit, well, considerably, more like Lew.
I didn't start out industrious and make my own way, never looking
back, but instead have had conscience instilled in me gradually by a
series of fortunate associations.
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