Mortality & Mercy in Vienna

Mon Jan 11 00:57:26 CST 2016

I see, and thanks again. But I would say that's a bit strained from
Tanner's side. Regarding names, does he really write "Irving Siegel"?

2016-01-11 7:24 GMT+01:00 John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>:

> At college they call Siegel 'Stephen' due to his bumpy relationship
> with Catholicism, which Tanner takes to be a Joyce reference.
>
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 4:51 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > John – thanks for the Tanner!
> >
> > Too much rain? I don't know about that. The rain is outside, and once
> Siegel
> > is inside only mentioned once more, that it has dwindled to a light
> mist. I
> > cannot see an effort to use rain brillantly like Hemingway or Eliot.
> Perhaps
> > it adds to the claustrophobic setting.
> >
> > The allusion to Measure for Measure contains more than saying "he's one
> of
> > the greats". Joyce?
> >
> > 2016-01-11 2:35 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> " too much rain" is a great way to put it. That's the immaturity as a
> >> writer.
> >> But, just to say: the smart-ass tone comes back in works that work, I
> >> would say, don't you think.
> >> Smugness too, yes, esp for such a theme.
> >> But, just to say, later works do expose the author's attitudes a lot.
> But
> >> here his " attitude"
> >> Is pretty damn bad---nihilistic attitudes must contain stuff as big as
> >> WW2.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad
> >>
> >> On Jan 10, 2016, at 8:08 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Very well put!
> >>
> >> On 11 Jan 2016 11:57 am, "ish mailian" <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> The story suffers from all the weaknesses Pynchon points out in his SL
> >>> Introduction to the shorts he re-published in that book. Like the Small
> >>> Rain, this story suffers under the cloud of too much rain, rain that is
> >>> supposed to do something that Hemingway or Eliot did brilliantly, but
> young
> >>> P doesn't really know what those great authors did with the rain and
> so he
> >>> doesn't even know how how to copy them. It's the smart ass tone that's
> most
> >>> embarrassing and although P admits to his juvenile and proto-fascist
> >>> attitudes toward Others, including women, this story, because like The
> Small
> >>> Rain, features a narrative that is essentially the author, and exposes,
> >>> without irony or distance the author's attitudes, his smugness and
> >>> immaturity, is a good one to omit from the collection.
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 7:30 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> It feels like an undergrad story because the engagement with the
> >>>> intertexts seems so superficial. "I've read Conrad and Joyce and
> >>>> Shakespeare! They're the greats, right?" Later on he does really
> >>>> complex and fascinating stuff with allusions and referents but he's
> >>>> only just starting down that track, here.
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 11:25 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>> > One question is How much of the play and the line matters to the
> >>>> > story. Mackin has reminded
> >>>> > That TRP has said he only uses as little as he needs; Jochen points
> >>>> > right to the major meaning of the line, used when the Duke turns
> over Vienna
> >>>> > to Angelo.   DC is as corrupt as Vienna.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > MfM plot is different. In detail. Thematically?
> >>>> >
> >>>> > We 've got to account for the anti-religion, anti-Christian religion
> >>>> > in this story. Pervades. Some Interpreters of MfM have spoken of
> >>>> > Shakespeare's almost-sacrilegious anti-Christianity. all "
> Christian" values
> >>>> > gone from Vienna. No Christian cultural values ala Eliot.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > What about sex/love? Rachel doesn't show to the party. But they talk
> >>>> > okay. The woman on the Ojibway's lap?
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Nihilistic terrorism because God, all values, even native ones,
> gone,
> >>>> > dead in the entropic wasteland--that party? Metaphorically
> speaking--ending
> >>>> > in the shooting as complicit Siegel gets away?
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Sent from my iPad
> >>>> >
> >>>> >> On Jan 10, 2016, at 5:37 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> 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/?listpynchon-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >
>
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