Pynchon and the Status Quo

[Brian D. McCary]

Andrew Walser queries:

"If some works of aesthetic distinction survive, and others vanish,
surely those that last do so, in part, because they conform to one
dominant ideology or another.  Obviously, Pynchon has established his
credentials as a critic:  we personify the powers he questions as Them.
But what Yes (in a whisper) balances his No In Thunder?  I assume he would
not enjoy the acceptance he does -- from universities to popular culture
- -- if he did not prop up something."

I see a few of things.  Briefly:

1	The urge we have to anthropamorphise objects.  Our society is
petrified of technology (yes, sometimes rightly so) and infatuated with 
objects.  Seems like people are scared by these things which are taking
control of their lives, which they don't understand.  Humanizing them as
Pynchon does by weaving his stories around them (the rocket, Byron the Bulb,
all that living iron stuff we kicked around at the beginning of GRGR) 
reassures people who otherwise see them as arbitrary.  This is, of 
course, false.  A car is a car.  A bulb is a bulb.  

2	Basically the same thing w/r/t "the system" and society as 
a whole.  Perhaps it comforts people who percieve exactly how little 
control they have over their life to think that someone, no matter how
evil, is aware of them.  Seems to me that far too many people would
rather be slaves to an attentive master than free and irrelevant.  I
know that I don't have unbounded control over my life, and that other's
decisions affect me greatly, but I think Pynchon goes the extra step
and proposes that they do so while aware of the impact on each of us
personally.

3	And, of course, the whole idea of life after death, if intelligently
presented, gives false hope to those who fear they are wasting their lives 
that their's is not a gross blunder.....

IMO, of course
Brian McCary