Conspiracies...

[Jan Klimkowski]

When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy theory?

Of course some people have great fun discussing conspiracy mania as a   
self-propagating cultural meme.  Or the late C20 manifestation of   
hysteria.  Or whatever....  Often these analyses contain much truth.  But   
is this what Pynchon is writing about?  Is Pynchon the prophet who   
predicted the alt.JFK newsgroup and Harvard academics propagating myths   
of alien abduction?

Or does Pynchon have other motivations?  Is he at least as interested in   
the history that doesn't make it into the textbooks?

I've spoken to academics @ SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies)   
here in London who had no knowledge of the Herero genocide until they   
learnt of it thru Pynchon's work.  Some of them have since written papers   
and taught classes about these events.

Everything about IG Farben, disposable labour in the rocket camps, the   
continuation of global business during the war etc etc in GR is true.   
 These are the proto-conspiracies, the ones with a strong, factual basis   
but many of the facts were first given prominence by GR itself.

Why did Pynchon write blurb for Sale's history of SDS, Matthiesson, Tom   
Robbins, Mary Beal, Marge Piercy.  I mean, "Dance the Eagle to Sleep" is   
a D-Minus piece of art.  Maybe, just maybe, it was because Pynchon is   
sympathetic to many of these work's themes, to their worldview - even if   
his own art and analysis is infinitely more sophisticated.

GR is the greatest work of art I know.  I return to it again and again.   
 But for me, part of Pynchon's project is finding an artistic and   
psychological form to explore what happens to the mind when you start   
travelling the suppressed byways of history, when you find yourself in   
Oz, in the Zone, with all the fences down - as Pynchon himself did...

But then, I'm a hack....