Mortality & Mercy in Vienna

[John Bailey]

Tanner:

"The problem, in both works, is how do you - can you, can anyone? -
cure or heal a degenerate and, as it were, 'damned' society?...

The possibility of any real healing and prophecy recurs throughout
Pynchon. More generally, the problem becomes nothing less than how to
be in the contemporary world, particularly if it is as infernal as the
Washington party implies. One way is to cultivate disengagement,
emotional immunity; keeping 'cool', to use a term deployed by Pynchon.
But that, of course, can lead to paralysis and inhumanity. The other
extreme is to want to be a great healer and prophet, but that can lead
to a different kind of inhumanity - and madness. Pynchon's work is
constantly seeking to discover something in between these two
extremes....

Irving Siegel is not just an example of a failed healer, a false
prophet. He is both a product and a representative of a society that
has accepted - indeed, eagerly embraced - 'mortality' on an
ever-increasing scale, and has forgotten the 'mercy'."

I can see why Pynchon might not have wanted to include M&M in Slow
Learner. Casting the native American as a murderous cannibal is lame,
and the "kill 'em all" sentiment underriding the narrative is a
cop-out for the Pynchon who connects one's literary approach to death
as a marker of maturity (and in whose works characters die very, very
infrequently).

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> yes, very worryingly claustrophobic.
>
> I have been trying to write something that says other than your other
> critical voice. My mind stops there, except to think it can't mean
> that, can it? I might suggest it shows the nihilism of said
> liberalism, and of native American revenge (justice) as well?
> The complicity of them, of the native and the liberal bureaucrat.
>
> I want to reread Measure for Measure before saying more. It IS
> claustrophobic and even the resolution contains bad shit.
>
> I have both Tanner books but still in boxes since recent move.
>
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Significantly, Tony Tanner begins his preface for Measure for Measure with
>> the sentence: "This is a worryingly claustrophobic play." Is that not true
>> for Pynchon's short story as well? He then muses about the word
>> "circummured" that Shakespeare invented for this play and never used again.
>>
>> Perhaps somebody who reads this post has Tanner's book about Pynchon at
>> hand: Apparently he deals on the pages 26-29 with M&M in Vienna.
>>
>> Meanwhile here's another critical voice:
>>
>> "Any political critique of Pynchon should begin there: the shrugging off of
>> murder. ... The poignancy of 'Mortality and mercy in Vienna' is revealed in
>> that shrug, which is the real centre to the story. It indexes perfectly an
>> inability and unwillingness to intervene in a world in which mercy and
>> mortality appear inseparable. and terrorism a kind of unfathomable justice.
>> The shrug shows up the fine limits of Pynchon's story at the same time as
>> revealing the moment (so often repeated in recent American history) when
>> America's confused liberalism emerges as scandalously self-conscious
>> indifference."
>>
>> Terrorism a kind of unfathomable justice, indeed.
>>
>> 2016-01-09 9:22 GMT+01:00 Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> You said that now at lest twice, David. The high schooler who can put out
>>> sth like Mortality and Mercy would have a bright future as a writer, I
>>> think. And I don't think it has much morality. I think it's better than
>>> Entropy, that one is really charged with symbols. You all know the scene
>>> where the parting Duke delegates his power to Angelo with those words, it's
>>> the first. And Siegel is no hypocrite – what he does, given the choice
>>> between M&M, is quite cool, don't you think.
>>>
>>> What I thought after Slow Learner came out: that P didn't republish that
>>> short story because he didn't like to see that name again, associated with
>>> his own, the name of that asshole who broke the silence about him.
>>>
>>> 2016-01-09 2:00 GMT+01:00 David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>> Too much morality for my taste, and so clunky to boot!  This feels like
>>>> it was written by a high schooler.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Friday, January 8, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> The more I 'analyze' this story, the more problematic it is to me.
>>>>> Some over the top
>>>>> symbols and allusions and symbolic motivation I don't think I get.....
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, the motivation does not seem 'earned', right?....but wha is it?
>>>>>
>>>>> Siegel is Mercy?....the Ojibway is Mortality? .......I cannot
>>>>> think the influence of the play into this story.......so different..
>>>>> ---- Vienna is absolutely corrupt, known.......and I guess DC is
>>>>> supposed to be too.....
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 3:11 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> > http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/vienna.html
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Starts in rain. (see Small Rain and P on that symbolism borrowed from
>>>>> > Hem)
>>>>> >
>>>>> > a party. like Entropy.
>>>>> > music   like Entropy
>>>>> >
>>>>> > girl named Rachel. Like V. Who doesn't show.(absent)
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Zeit [Time] as in V. a doctor here.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > P-like crazy names.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > very overt Catholicism imagery. and a mother who refutes it at 19.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > what else?
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>>
>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l