Pynchon mention, or: Is it really that funny?

[Monte Davis]

I¡¯m not sure what it means to say  that humor is (or isn¡¯t) ¡°decisive for
Pynchon¡¯s art,¡° but I do still laugh out loud re-reading passages I first
read 45 years ago. And I do not find that they detract from his moral
seriousness. It is, after all, in a very funny dialogue between Zoyd and
Hector that we encounter the central question of Vineland:

 

   ¡°Hector! Bite yer tongue! You tellin¡¯ me I ¨D I wasn't innocent, me
behavin¡¯ like a saint through it all?¡± 

   ¡°You behaved about like everybody else, pardner, sorry.¡± 

   ¡°That bad.¡± 

   ¡°I won¡¯t aks you to grow up, but just sometime, please, aks yourself,
OK, ¡®Who was saved?¡¯ That¡¯s all, rill easy, ¡®Who was saved?¡¯¡± 

   ¡°Beg pardon?¡± 

   ¡°One OD¡¯d on the line at Tommy¡¯s wait¨ªn for a burger, one got into
some words in a park¨ªn lot with the wrong gentleman, one took a tumble in a
faraway land, so on, more ¡¯n half of ¡¯em currently on the run, and you so
far around the bend you don¡¯t even see it, that¡¯s what became of your
happy household, you¡¯d¡¯ve done better up against the SWAT team. Just in
the privacy of your thotz, Zoyd. As a exercise, li¡¯l kinda Zen meditation.
¡®Who was saved?¡¯¡± 

 

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Kai Frederik Lorentzen
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2013 7:46 AM
To: pynchon -l
Subject: Pynchon mention, or: Is it really that funny?

 


http://goingdutchwithgermanwriters.wordpress.com/

"He reads very little, he said. But he seems to go to libraries and get
fixations with things ¨C Thomas Pynchon made him laugh out loud and get
chucked out of the library the other day, apparently." 

There are funny things in Pynchon - the rocket limericks, or the dialogues
of Zoyd and Hector -, but I doubt the whole story and I'm not sure that
humor is decisive for Pynchon's art. It's not that I don't like humor in
literature, I just think it's not Pynchon's domain, and the image of Pynchon
as a funny writer has become a clich¨¦ by now. At least over here. And while
it's true that it is very hard to tell - and the longer you read the harder
it becomes - what Pynchon is actually saying, his work is definitely not a
joke. Carl Schmitt says that all valid political theories - like the ones of
Hobbes and Machiavelli - do consider the human being to be evil. As a
catholic social theorists Schmitt traces this tradition back to original
sin. For Pynchon, too, original sin - or "inherent vice" - is what makes
people do what they do. This is not saying that Pynchon does not point out
socio-historical factors like slavery, Prussian militarism, or
industrialization which certainly do contribute to the whole mess. But
there's always - the cases of Frenesi and Lake make this clear - something
about the characters' failure which cannot be explained in rational terms.
This is what I call Pynchon's catholic seriousness. It's what makes his
literature true. Far more important than the dope jokes and the scatology.
Feel free to disagree. 
      

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