Political Pynchon

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Lindsay Gillies writes:
"So its not metaphysical vs. politics---its both at the same time, in
dialectical relationship.  We might look (in terms of "revolutionary"
politics) to some strands of French Marxism, for example, particularly
Sartre at the time of Search for a Method and the later Critique.  He also
is concerned to place the individual and groups into the broader political
process without losing the power of individual psycology."


That is probably a better way of putting it.  Of course, "politics" in some
sense is never absent from human product (and fiction all the more so) and
P. never loses his interest in the metaphysical, but there is a shift of
emphasis around the time of COL49.  Yes, V. has political aspects, but they
are all subsumed under Stencil's of a vast and threatening connectedness to
human history.  In GR, that connectedness (paranoia) is also a theme and at
least as problematic as in V. (the threat/possibility of an "anti-paranoia"--
that nothing is connected), but has a distinct set of human agencies, whether
in the form of individuals like Lyle Bland and Pointsman or in the vaguer 
entities of Boards and Councils and the like.  Or, to put it another way, the
possible malign intelligence symbolized by V. herself is an "It"; the 
intelligence of GR is "They."

For example, Pynchon certainly exposes an obscure(d) piece of Western colonial
history through the Herero uprising, yet it is only one anecdote in the history
of V. that Stencil has re/constructed and engenders no Counterforce.  In GR, on
the other hand, the Herero Uprising leads to the Schwartzkommando and one of 
the main threads of that book's narrative.

Or, in "Lowlands," Dennis Flange retreats to one of those hidden places of
refuge that the children of "The Secret Integration" seek--an underground
retreat complete with a fantastic (in every sense of the term) nymphette.  The
children of TSI have to forego their quest for refuge because of their parents'
intervention and their unavoidable love for and attachment to those parents.
In VINELAND, the Underworld opens wide again--but this time as a doorway to
Hell that will receive Brock Vond, while the others continue to inhabit the
surface world.

In V., the primary question is whether humanity will yield to the Inanimate (if
it has not already done so), a somewhat abstract concept.  In GR, the Inanimate
is transformed into an active force, with active agents in both This World and
the Other(s).  Here, one is forced to choose, but the choices may not be easy
ones.  VINELAND is about the consequences of choice, including the choice not
to choose--which perhaps does bring us back to Sartre, after all!


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)