Politics and History

[Don.Lloyd]

On June 28th, Lindsay Gillies writes (my paraphrasing),

4. TP is aware of many political issues, but his purpose is not
primarily political.
5. He is more concerned with history.
7. The combination of obsession withy history and individual psychology
causes a secondary apparition of "politics", which is the sum of
individual activity within the context of history (the group's story
through time.)
8. But one could not say say that TP is concerned with politics in
any primary way.

I have to disagree here, especially in the implied relationship between
history and politics.  In my reading of P, it is exactly his emphasis on
history that makes his writing so political.

Consider Mondaugen's story in South Africa.  Not only is this a very
politicized reading, P goes to great lengths to portray the types of
individual psychologies which makes such overtly destructive political
acts as the suppression of the native population "palatable" to the
ruling class.

Again in COL49, Pierce is fairly clearly a conservative republican
force and at least one posibility for WASTE is that it is a vehicle
for the suppressed working class (admitedly only one reading, but
a viable one).

Gravity's Rainbow, again I see very often the portrayal of how individual
belief systems (especially those based in science, i.e.--Jampf's
behavioral psychology) result in political positions.

Vineland, consider Brock Vond and how closely he is aligned with the
Reagan conservativism of the era.  Not also Frenisi's family history
back to the Union 20's.

I would have to say that to the extent P is concerned with history
he is also concerned with politics.

Don Lloyd