The nothingness of obscenity can’t be subjected to anything. The fact that it’s not a cancellation of existence but only a notion, and one resulting from contact, far from alleviates, and actually increases the disapproval generally felt. It is unrelated to value. It is not as if the erotic summit is something heroic attained at the cost of harsh sufferings. Clearly, the results bear no relation to the efforts
“‘It isn’t espionage,’ had been, and still was, spoken more out of petulance than any desire to establish purity of motive. He wished it could all be as respectable and orthodox as spying. But somehow in his hands the traditional tools and attitudes were always employed toward mean ends: cloak for a laundry sack, dagger to peel potatoes; dossiers to fill up dead Sunday afternoons; worst of all, disguise itself not out of any professional necessity but only as a trick, simply to involve him less in the chase, to put off some part of the pain of dilemma on various ‘impersonations.’”
Thomas Pynchon | V.