Mortality & Mercy in Vienna

[Jochen Stremmel]

Yes, Mark, thanks for your enlightening remarks on Pynchon's shortest novel
which is one of my favorites, too.

And the reason that makes me a defender of M&M is probably that of all
stories it was that which opened my eyes to P. when I read it in the 70s.
Some time before a German author translated it as Sterblichkeit und
Erbarmen in Wien (and with his subtitle: "with a little help from my
friends" iirc).



2016-01-11 18:50 GMT+01:00 <kelber at mindspring.com>:

> Thanks for the pithy comments on COL49, Mark. I'm in the camp that thinks
> it's among Pynchon's best. Just because of its short length, it's probably
> over-represented on syllabi (no proof of this, just a hunch) and it's a
> less-intimidating gateway to Pynchon. Maybe that's part of the reason
> Pynchon felt it was a failure.
>
> Laura
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> >Sent: Jan 11, 2016 9:14 AM
> >To: ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> >Cc: "Pynchon-l at waste.org" <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: Re: Mortality & Mercy in Vienna
> >
> >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
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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