Newt, Systems, etc......

[Jan KLIMKOWSKI]

For some unknowable reason, this E-Mail arrived in my Inbox more than a week 
after being posted, during which time WildForest has visited the Aryan 
Nation and returned with fascinating tales of the deification of Wernher the 
Owl...

(For what it's worth, I think just about all the readings of the von Braun 
epigraph discussed on the P-list are tenable, though I happen to be 
particularly attracted to the notion that TP penned the words himself, 
regardless of whether this turns out to be true or not.)

Anyway, Heikki wrote:

>Jan, since things seem to be easier for you than for a pathetic litnit
like me, could you tell for starters what you mean by concepts as
"revolutionary" or "political"? Papa Jameson tells in one of his latest
books that _Vineland_ is clearly more "political" than Pynchon's
previous novels. Were we to believe uncle Fred, is _Vineland_ then,
>consequently, also more "revolutionary" than the others?

>But IF it is _GR_, not _Vineland_, that is Pynchon's most "political"
novel (which would make Duke Fredric's views of "political"
>anachronistic), what are we left with?


For me, Jameson, along with Derrida, Lacan, Eagleton et al, is indeed part 
of the problem.  However, having plouged thru some of Jameson's stuff, I'm 
afraid I currently lack the energy or willpower to read his comments on 
Vineland.  This obviously precludes me entering any debate on the merits of 
his work, so on this particular  issue I'll sign off by saying that Vineland 
for me is full of sadness and shame, and indeed reads almost as a personal 
apologia rather than a political work.


I'd far rather identify other areas for any debate that may ensue.  So, 
how's about that ole favourite, Systems in GR.  They and the preterite.  IG 
Farben and the Counterforce.  Commodity cartels and custard pie 
entrepreneurship.  Richard M Zhluub and Leni Pokler.

The "Ones and Zeroes and let's all live in the excluded middle" school of 
Pynchon crit is interesting both philosophically and as a reading strategy. 
 But, it can lead to misreadings of GR, IMHO.  The Ones and Zeroes above are 
patently not equally powerful, oppositional forces.  Telling Leni Pokler or 
Katje or Osbie Feel to live in an excluded middle is simply ducking out.

GR is a book of resistance and difference.  And of course resistance and 
difference can get systematized - Himmler and J Edgar Hoover are both known 
to have painted their toenails and donned frocks.

I was fascinated to learn (courtesy of the kind posting of the Jules Siegel 
article) that TP appears to have been Rocketman circa 1969, at a time when 
GR was still known as "Mindless Pleasures".

GR contains new (for the time) material about real world crimes perpetrated 
by IG Farben.  Similarly, African scholars I know have told me that the 1963 
exploration of the Herero slaughter is right in at the beginning of the 
rediscovery of this forgotten, supressed, fabricated (takeyapick) history. 
  This is often lost sight of in the pomo fog.

I also agree with WildForest that if you "kill the language you end up with 
a dead text".  Contemporary litcrit is not innocent in these matters.

Brotherly
jan