Pynchon and homophobia

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 24 Mar 1996, Chris Stolz wrote:

> 
> Has anybody given any thought to the narrator's use of homosexual
> sex (in _GR_) as another way of discussing the perversity of
> Them?  There are lots of refrences in _GR_ that use gay sex in
> order to describe a cluster of foul things, and gay sex is very
> much opposed to the novel's fleeting moments of purity and
> straigh t sexual bliss...I guess
> the question I'm asking here is whether or not Pynchon's use of
> gay sex as an index of perversity is, within the conext of a
> loosely left-critical novel, strangely anachronistic/conservative
> or part of a deeper purpose I don't quite get.

Artists, great and ungreat, down through the ages have not been respecters
of persons.

Shakespeare and Dickens used Jews to portray avarice, and TV comedians use
Cleveland to signifiy a place you wouldn't want to live. Inaccurate and
hurtful in both cases, but they achieve the intended effects with the
audiences being addressed.

Right thinking people -- among whom I include myself :-) -- are offended.  
At the same, time I can't help thinking that generally we all enjoy the 
artistic or comedic effects thereby produced and would feel  cheated if 
writers toned down their creative impulses in the cause of justice.
Writing ain't beanbags. You do what you have to do to hold the reader.

If the main thrust of the GR were the class struggle for justice, then I 
would think that the gay identification with "Them" would be
"anachronistic/conservative", not to say totally off the wall. But,
as you say, the book is only loosely left-critical.

"Them" _is_ identified to some degree with Capitalism, and "Us" with
the displaced. But isn't there much more to it than that? Them/Us is also 
widespread paranoia affecting the whole human race. Moreover, there is 
the religious metaphor of preterite and elect. Only it turns out on best
authority (notwithstanding Father what's his name's speculations) that we 
all die anyway. We're all preterite in the end. "Them-ness" is a fluid 
state. 

So I don't think you can fault Pynchon on political grounds. His aims
were different.

I'm not going to try to deny that the identification of gays with the
bad guys is not hurtful. I will say this. You can make the case
(as I tried to cursorily suggest) that the notion of "Them" is to
at least some extent delusional. Therefore, what more apt expression of a 
delusion than the fear with which a traditionally "different" group is 
perceived. In 1996 as it was in 1973. Pynchon took the American (and 
world) psyche he found and ran with it.

				P.