Mortality & Mercy in Vienna

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, 'making things literary' all over the f*ing pages is its major
fault, I agree. Symbolism and allusions out the wazoo squeezed
almost breathlessly into a short story. My god, the eucharist! Not
just "cool' but a "Lupesco cool'. Windigo psychosis. and clichés--a
Modigliani neck, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed--he musta winced in 84.
Overly patterned might be the lit crit generalization.

Now here is where I am going to get more interesting for you all to
argue with. Someone once said of a writer, maybe Shakespeare, that
amidst his greatest density of meanings, he also let his plays
'breathe'. Minor characters as alive as you or me, so to speak, all we
learn somehow thematically relevant but not felt that way at first. Or
mixing prose and poetry so artfully, or the in-between scenes--I love
the Henrys and some comedies for this. In obviously dramatically
heightened works---is Shakespeare an hysterical realist?; he sure
ain't no social realist, as real as he can be--he allowed them to
breathe, so to speak. This matters for the illusion of reality, was
argued.

(early P.S. so to speak: Bloom notes that Measure for Measure and
Macbeth are the two plays he loves for their fullest intensities.
Others, even Lear, the rich Midsummer Night, "breathe" more in the
above respect)

In prose fiction, the life around the Intensities matters, most seem
to say. Because we feel it as we read. The setting up of effects, of
climaxes. Backstories and unpredictable elements of character and plot
that add some kind of psychic depth (at least).

I remember reading on and on in a long Dreiser story once, sure that
it dragged until the cumulative effect (of emotional poverty) hit.
And a Sebald novel hit me like a blow once with a sense of what has been lost.

Jump cut: Why does TRP still think The Crying of Lot 49 fails? I
"forgot all I had learned" about writing short stories. I have just
read it again, I embrace it wholeheartedly (but as Kerry says in the
Companion, it can be more, not less puzzling, upon each rereading. The
last reading, here on the Plist, I felt we--i--had gotten to a very
fine reading, "my' adjusted reading then. Now, this reading, not so
same old same old me.

But, here's a notion I have had about Crying for awhile so did
feel--you want to talk projection, OK?--this reading as I read
straight through (with, of course, a lot of internalized knowledge and
opinion). It is loaded with symbolism; it can hit one, as it did my
first baffled reading, as a game of Clue so to speak. Yes, the reality
and meaning of Tristero and The Courier's Tragedy text for Oedipa is
overt and the major part of the first bafflement but I don't mean
that. Once you accept that, you still have all the curious things that
happen. All the scenes full of 'clues' to sort out AND all of the
curious things that are on the page between all the scenes. From the
TV and the expectant revelation and the early tower allusions and on
and on. All that density of allusion that scholars and all of us have
been getting off on all these years. One might say, per the above,
that the story hardly "breathes".

I tentatively off this as why TRP might no longer like the story as we
all do. Please discuss.
With GR, although that book is really INTENSE and full of allusions,
and overarching (groan) symbols, from Pirates' banana breakfast on, it
also "breathes". He needed room to write at his best is what The
Crying of Lot 49 shows.

This reading of Lot 49 made me feel, did build up magnificently to,
the theme of historical uncertainty, historical possibility, so to
call it. That perfect waiting at the end after we have been made to
feel that the old American society ways had this underflow working all
along.  The US postal unity was gone. (terrif words on what little is
now communicated by mail in Lot 49, which I will look up for anyone
who wants reminded) In What all say the social narrowness of postwar
America in the fifties was like. For me, Phoenix walking
back-and-forth in the master's house in The Master as well as that job
he flees from). And more standard histories and works and presented in
Lot 49 as Oedipa's buried Young Republican suburban girl life.
 I watched Don Siegel's movie of that parable of the fifties, The
Invasion of the Body Snatchers last eve, wherein full humanity is
being lost. The narrowing of feeling and thinking and everything that
matters. So fine.
I seemed to notice for the first time that the end of the Holy Roman
Empire is in the Lot 49 story!

The end of Lot 49 is the revelation of possible opening out of
society, of life in that society.
Anyway, so it unfolds today for me.



On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 5:39 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do know about it ;-)
> Young P is trying to make things literary by alluding to FWA and the
> Wasteland, here, and in The Small Rain, and is, though he obviously doesn't
> know it, as with his use of Shakespeare, working with symbolisms, of death,
> that, as he tells us in the SL Introduction, he doesn't have a mature
> apprehension of.
>
>
> On Monday, January 11, 2016, 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l