BE: Pears Not Pixels

[Dave Monroe]

Not Beckett. "My" other author.

On Thursday, January 30, 2014, <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
> Wonder who you're thinking of here.  Might you provide an example of
someone you think writes from a purely amoral vision?  Celine?  Beckett?  I
wouldn't classify them as such, but who to you fits?
>
> Being or writing with a 'purely' amoral vision seems as contrived and
tedious as
> writing with all your chips riding on some particular moral truth, fad,
vision.
> I am personally a moral thinker who, I believe, also knows the limits of
moral
> thinking.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>j
> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thu, Jan 30, 2014 11:25 am
> Subject: Re: BE: Pears Not Pixels
>
> Being or writing with a 'purely' amoral vision seems as contrived and
tedious as
> writing with all your chips riding on some particular moral truth, fad,
vision.
> I am personally a moral thinker who, I believe, also knows the limits of
moral
> thinking. I feel it is more honest and real to defend my moral and
ultimately
> spiritual sensibilities than to abandon them for something that I don't
trust ,
> admire or consider valid. Nevertheless the world sings its own song and I
hear
> but a fragment of that world or of the writing of the elusive Mr.
Pynchon. I
> grow pears and they are as mysterious to me as pixels.
>
> It feels to me that part of what Pynchon does is describe the world with
such
> colorful intensity, and with such a fearless inner urge to tell truth
that most
> moral or spiritual ways of seeing( from Buddhism to fun loving hedonism
and may
> points between or beyond)will find entry into his novels. It is less
> accommodating to the humorless, the close minded, the literarily or
> ideologically orthodox, and he can even be quite satirically vicious
about moral
> hypocrisy or destructive addictions. Still, that satire always requires a
moral
> fulcrum to be effective.
>
> Pynchon also creates a universe layered with different dimensions, some
having
> karmic rules, some inscrutable and poetic, many silly but all clearly
> referencing both the sublime grace and total weirdness of the inner lives
of
> human culture. Some reader seem to think these underground, terrestrial
and
> floating worlds are a gentle or ungentle mockery of all cosmic visions,
but
> they can equally be read as a gentle openness to all such things.
Generally with
> Pynchon there are appearances and disappearances but no grand moral
finales, no
> final word. The apocalypses he describes are not a function of spiritual
beliefs
> or cosmic judgement but our own miserable capacities for poisoning
everyone to
> kill what we fear and hate most.
>
> Maybe P's morality is suited more to talking monkeys than angels, Karma
101:
> why making the planet a battleground is bad for everyone, The ass you kiss
> goodbye could be your own.
>
> On Jan 29, 2014, at 8:45 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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