A.O. Scott on PSH in The Master...

[malignd at aol.com]

Two favorite portrayals:  Freddie Miles in The Amazing Mr. Ripley and Andy, the older brother in Sidney Lumet's nasty little treasure Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.  The latter, interestingly, has a love-the-stuff heroin shoot-up scene.


Many others but don't want to go on ...



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Feb 4, 2014 12:02 pm
Subject: Fw: A.O. Scott on PSH in The Master...





"His goal seemed to be not just the psychological truth that has long been the baseline criterion of post-Method acting, but a moral uncertainty that remains too fraught and frightening for many of us, in art or in life, to engage."
 
When we talked here on a writer's "moral vision", we seemed to agree that an artist's vision is ....different, "larger"?, often a transvalution of values [Nietzsche] compared to the narrow 'morals' of any time.....
 
And within P's vision, we agree that his anti-either-orness seems part of his 'moral vision"...that is, among other meanings, he often does not come down solidly on one side of an either-or dilemma......
 
Which might be seen as "moral uncertainty" in our real world many times...
 
Which, see above, is one reason I greatly liked Hoffman as The Master as saw (part of) his character as partly P--influenced...
 
Anyway, this whole NYT piece by AO Scott on Hoffman is mostly focused on The Master and includes the observation that it may take us--we watchers and reflectors---some time to plumb its depths, its insights into postwar America.....of that, I agree.....


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