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" ... reading Herbert Marcuse ... " (Inherent Vice, p. 301)<br>
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On 28.03.2016 10:13, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:<br>
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<small>> Molly Hite’s critical work with Pynchon published in
2004 has the title “Fun Actually Was Becoming Quite Subversive.â€
It is an interesting title, because it originated somewhere
completely different than <em>Gravity’s Rainbow</em>, in fact
it came from the 1969 trial of the Chicago Seven, a group of
young men from antiwar and revolutionary groups accused of
disrupting the 1968 Democratic Convention. This was considered a
very important trial in the counterculture movement, something
Pynchon famously embraced in his works. The exact quote
originated from the testimony of Abbie Hoffman and reads “fun
was very important… it was a direct rebuttal of the kind of
ethics and morals that were being put forth in the country to
keep people working in a rate race.†Hite uses this to introduce
her interpretation of Pynchon. She argues that “the idea of fun
could subvert an oppressive capitalist structure is central to
this novel of excess.†</small>
<p><small>           Molly Hite uses Herbert Marcuse’s 1955
culture synthesis <em>Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical
Inquiry into Freud</em> to help frame her argument, and
plainly states that this work must have influenced Pynchon.
Marcuse claims that the period of time, which this book was
written in, was a period of great productivity and excess, and
with the technological advances, it became economically
feasible to have a “leisure culture.† However with this
culture of leisure comes a raising of standards and
consequently a “surplus-repression.†This is repression is the
repression of Freudian pleasures, conceding or flat out
rejecting the gratification of many desires which Freud saw as
necessary for a society to organize and survive. Marcuse
argues that by denying these pleasures principles that
“advanced civilizations are in danger from a second group of
instinctive impulses striving for death.†This, Hite states,
is where we get the dramatization of the destruction from the
rocket, as it becomes global. She argues “The V-2 Rocket rises
under human guidance..†and this is where we understand the
“death drive.†This is the natural tendency of society, to
progress to a certain point, and then fall into the death
drive; the arc of human civilization not unlike the arc of the
bomb.</small></p>
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<p><small>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Hite states that Pynchon understood
Marcuse’s possibility of escape from postindustrial
destruction, and encoded it in his book, however slight this
chance might be. By not becoming individuals we are doomed to,
as individuality in <em>Gravity’s Rainbow</em> is synonymous
with disrupting the productivity and subsequent regression of
human nature. This is where the overt sexual tones of the book
come from, especially the more risqué ones. These sexual acts
are done not in hopes of productivity, or reproducing, but
simply out of pleasure. By not denying these pleasures and
becoming individual of the society, we can escape the
trajectory of destruction. Hite does acknowledge that these
chances are incredibly small, that betrayal and self-defeating
tendencies are built into the system, that “every revolution
has been a betrayed revolution.†So for Hite’s interpretation,
humanity is at stake, the trajectory is annihilation, and
Pynchon offers a way to escape that trajectory.</small></p>
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<p><small>Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â I would like to agree with Hite in her
thinking. In the very beginning of the novel, we are
introduced with a very dark image of the concentration camp,
with people being ushered into a bleak hotel. At that hotel,
they wait quietly for the bomb to drop without any hope left.
Right after we get that dark image, we are given one of the
most colorful scenes in the novel, the banana breakfast. After
a night of indulging in alcohol to excess, Pirate wakes up and
picks bananas, something that was rationed during the time
period. He then begins to cook a wonderful breakfast
consisting of banana everything, and the scent alone is enough
to ward of death, Pynchon famously says “Fuck Death.†So by
indulging in this pleasure, they are able to escape death,
they are able to escape the trajectory of human nature even
just for a morning. I believe scenes like this are a clear
road map that Pynchon gives us, that maybe by not denying
these pleasures we might be able to get out of the arc of
human nature, or in Pynchon’s work, the literal bomb. The
chances are slim however, these people are protected only as
long as the scent of the banana breakfast wafts over them, but
the chance does exist.   <br>
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<p><small>Â </small></p>
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<p><small>Hite, Molly, “‘Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite
Subversive’: Herbert Marcuse, the Yippies, and the Value
System of Gravity’s Rainbow,†Contemporary Literature 51.4
(Winter 2010): 677-702. <<br>
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<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://englit0500.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/fun-actually-was-actually-becoming-subversive/">https://englit0500.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/fun-actually-was-actually-becoming-subversive/</a><br>
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