BE: Pears Not Pixels

[Monte Davis]

Yep. One of the unexamined (or at least not-often-enough-examined)
assumptions about modern / post-modern fiction, especially among observers
with an axe to grind (I'm looking at you, John Gardner) is that because we
all know how sanctimonious and hypocritical those dopey Victorians were, we
Don't Do Moral Judgments Any More.

I'm not immune: for years, every time I found in Pynchon a resonance or
even explicit reference to Dante, or to Dickens the moralist, or to
Greene's and Le Carre's dramas of faith and doubt and betrayal, I'd wonder:
is this only because I happen to like those guys as well? Doesn't TRP riff
on, undermine, and implicitly reject any moral scheme more ambitious than
'keep cool, but care'?

But I was so much older then.

"Dear Mom, I put a couple of people in Hell today." (GR 537)



On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Magnificent,wonderful review...i remember when my use of "moral' got some
> blowback but
> Pynchon is what she says in every book, every scene,every word.
> Cassandra, I salute you.
>
>
>
>   *From:* Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> *To:* "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 29, 2014 4:02 AM
> *Subject:* BE: Pears Not Pixels
>
>  http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/pears-not-pixels
>
>
>
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