From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 21:21:39 BST
Rick and all:
Let me take a different, additional approach.
dmb had said:
...More to the point, the reason I don't take Lila's ability to speak
English as a sign of her intellectual quality, besides the undisputable fact
that the author says she has none...
R
'Undisputable' fact? That sounds like a challenge to me.
.........................you have to look at both equally as characters in
the same world. Phaedrus is NOT the omniscient author. Phaedrus's thoughts
are his own and he's just another person in that world seeing things from
his own perspective. Phaedrus thought Lila was "intellectually" nowhere,
and that intellectual quality was "outside her range". Well, if this were
LITERALLY true, then Phaedrus himself must sub-retarted, because if you read
carefully, you'll note that it's Lila who outsmarts Phaedrus when they argue
about beauty....
dmb says:
As I understand it, Phaedrus is the Platonist that existed prior to his
insanity and his character is then largely a ghost, a re-construction from
notes and such. The one who does the reconstructing is the narrator in ZAMM
and The Captain in Lila. And I'm pretty sure its the captain who is the one
working on the MOQ and comments on Lila's relative quality. In both books
talks about Phaedrus as if he were a completely different person from his
post-electro shock "therapy". And that's true enough. I think it serves to
balance Platonic and Aristotelean sides of himself and the two sides work
together on the MOQ. The captain is trying to avoid the mistakes that
Phaedrus made, going crazy being not the least of them. Then there is Pirsig
himself, the author of all that. I suppose the autobiographical nature of
his work makes it harder that it might otherwise be to sort this stuff out,
its not rocket surgery.
In any case, the phrase "indisputable fact" was perhaps used in frustration.
It seems that a very specific, obvious and concrete case has been placed
before the eyes and yet it has only been ignored and otherwise danced
around. The responses have been unresponsive. Even yours strikes me as quite
a reach and a little off the topic. I mean, does the book repeatedly say
Lila has no intellectual quality or not? Yes, it does. That is
"indisputable". We debate which character said it, but such a discussion
will not erase those words. I'm frustrated at the lack of a direct response
to passages, especially since it directly bears on the central question and
the title character, "who missed the whole point of everything".
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jul 20 2003 - 21:22:32 BST