Why

[Mark Kohut]

Bloom (actually) reads Measure for Measure, from where the title of
Pynchon's story
comes from, as nihilistic. He is mostly alone in this, although it
isn't a "problem play" for nothing.

It was a favorite Shakespeare when I was the age that
Pynchon was when he wrote it.

Here is the ending of it:

Espada broken, muleta  lost, horse disembowelled, picadors sick with
fear. Five in the afternoon, crowd screaming. Miura bull, sharp horns,
charging in. He figured there were about sixty seconds to make a
decision, and now the still small Jesuit voice, realizing that the
miracle was in his hands after all, for real, vaunted with the same
sense of exhiliration Siegel had once felt seeing five hundred
hysterical freshmen advancing on the women's dorms, knowing it was he
who had set it all in motion. And the other, gentle part of him sang
kaddishes for the dead and mourned over the Jesuit's happiness,
realizing however that this kind of penance was as good as any other;
it was just unfortunate that Irving Loon would be the only one
partaking of any body and blood, divine or otherwise. It took no more
than five seconds for the two sides to agree that there was really
only one course to take.

Quietly Siegel strolled back through the kitchen, through the living
room, taking his time, unnoticed by the crap shooters, opened the
door, stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him. He
walked downstairs, whistling. At the first floor landing, he heard the
first screams, the pounding of footsteps, the smashing of glass. He
shrugged. What the hell, stranger things had happened in Washington.
It was not until he had reached the street that he heard the first
burst of the BAR fire.


On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 5:14 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> It reads as if it were writte by a high school student.  Simplistic moralism
> trying to be cute.  It is no wonder that P is ashamed of it.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Friday, January 1, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Do we almost never mention Mortality & Mercy in Vienna on this list?
>> Because P himself did not reprint it in SLOW LEARNER, so we think/ know his
>> maturer self disrespects it?
>> Has stuff in it though. which is inevitably connected.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad-
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l