SLPAD 5 - atd- no, not that AtD: attitudes towards death

[Michael Bailey]

It’s important, for sure.

I’d carve out an exception for some science fiction and fantasy, just
because “seriously”, what if things were different…

Though serious work under that premise wouldn’t avoid taking some kind of
attitude towards death, implied or explicit.

But anyway, Mr Pynchon is unsatisfied with the ways his characters relate
to death in his first published story, TSR.

“They evade: they sleep late, they seek euphemisms. When they do mention
death they try  to make with the jokes. Worst of all, they hook it up with
sex.”

They do that in “The Big Chill,” but maybe more maturely than Levine &
cohort.


But this paragraph uses death-sex connection more maturely within its
structure to transition into commentary on writing about sex, the
“nervousness” of the era, and TSR’s retreat into high-flown language to
strategically blur the sex scene in the story.

Which is nice & succinct. He’s made a salient point on “the death
question”, and moves on to sex without an explicit new topic sentence.


Comparing _V._ - Slothrop’s young and immature, one can still wonder where
he’ll go, but one hopes he’ll be searching for love, however cluelessly;
Stencil’s multi-clueful search for “the word [letter, anyway] of the
Father” definitively ends. Eros v. Thanatos? Is having sex an avoidance of
considering death, or is it the optimal result of the consideration?

¿Quién sabe?