Pointsman's Fear

[Paul Mackin]

Bill B and Craig C suggest to me that THEY, under the right circumstances,  have every bit as much trouble in distinquishing US as WE, at times, have in distinguishing THEM. Can we not take comfort in this possibility? At least comfort OF SORTS? Yes, by all means, let us get the DIMENSION of comfort correctly.  Finding SMALL comfort would be coming perilously close to the sin of despair.

				P.
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From: 	Bill Burns[SMTP:wdburns at micron.net]
Sent: 	Friday, February 28, 1997 8:04 PM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Re: Pointsman's Fear

I was going to chime in last night on this angle. Pynchon may be suggesting
a weakness in Their defense--their tendency to pigeon-hole us. Uniforms
make us (according to Them) easily identifiable in terms of our "worth,"
but they also mask our individual idiosyncracies. This reductive mindset
makes them vulnerable because they no longer "know" their opponent (shades
of Sun Tzu). A-and given the superficial focus, they can be fooled into
seeing one of Them as one of us. 

At 09:49 AM 2/28/97 GMT+0200, Craig Clark wrote:
>
>I think this is TRP's satiric comment on one aspect of the miltary 
>mind, and in turn on Their mindset: that the eradication of 
>individual personality which takes place where human beings are 
>regimented and dressed all alike in uniform creates space for those 
>who oppose Their purposes to do so. _GR_ may be an intensely 
>despairing book, but it does offer windows of hope, and this is one 
>of them. I'm remembering also that wonderful quote about "Not all 
>lemmings go over the cliff" when Ludwig finds Ursula...

wdburns at micron.net
"There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count and
those who can't."