Advocations & freedom

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Henry Musikar wrote:
> 
> >From: Lycidas at worldnet.att.net
> >Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 11:55:17 -0600
> >
> >Pynchon is objective in his perspective. Satirist are
> >sometimes accused of being aloof, of not advocating change,
> >but this rarely the case, they are also often accused of
> >being sick or nuts or misanthropes, or paranoids--see the
> >strange case of Mr. Swift, but Pynchon advocates an awful
> >lot in my opinion and he is not only about tickling us out
> >of our favorite follies and rubbing our noses in our foul
> >humanity, he is a 60s dude I think, at least in that he
> >advocates that we educate ourselves about what's goin on,
> >oh, what's goin on, and do what we can about it. He's
> >certainly doing what he can best.
> 
> Sure P is very 60's, but not exactly a "storm the ramparts, I know the
> answer" version. I only see him advocating a few lowest common denominator
> assertions:
> 
> Freedom is good

Freedom is good, but what's freedom and what's good about
it? Is Mondaugen's freedom good? How about Foppl's freedom?
How about Zoyd's freedom? How about McAfee's? How about the
Herero child Sarah's freedom? How about Pig Bodine's
freedom? How about Weissmann's freedom? How about Mason's
freedom? How about the freedom of the slaves of Dixon's
outrage? Why talk of lowest common denominators? What's
free? Is Enzian free? Is Slothrop? Is Jamf? Is the System,
the Firm, the Studio, Them, The Elect, the Elite, free? Are
all these freedoms good? How about the freedom of the Dora
prisoners? Is Weissmann's self imprisonment--the thick
mascara on his lashes painting the prison bars on his eye
glasses--any worse than imprisonment of the rebellious slave
with sore feet and a ring around his throat, than the
concubines and workers of a new order of freedom? Freedom is
good. Pynchon advocates freedom. A satirist has got to have
a moral center. Pynchon advocates freedom, yes, but not some
forest gump dumbed-down version of history Freedom. Pynchon
digs deep into freedom and while I agree with you that the
common denominator is what he advocates, Freedom is a
complex equations, as Bob Dylan sez, "I'm liberal to a
degree, I want everybody to be free, but....for all the
missiles in Cuba."



TF