GR background - The Beast Reawakens

[Doug Millison]

I'm currently reading and recommend _The Beast Reawakens_ by Martin Lee,
about the neonazi movement and fascist revival. Lee's depiction of the way
Cold War realpolitik led the U.S. to go easy on Nazis so as not to lose all
Germany to Soviet influence and his descriptions of Nazis, spies, invading
forces, etc. in Germany immediately after the war provide good historical
background Pynchon's depiction of the Zone.

Pair this book with _Whiteout_ by Cockburn and St. Clair, and you'll have
in hand most if not all the evidence you need to show that Pynchon's
"paranoid" view of recent history is on the money. GR readers who came of
age after the 60s may not understand just how angry and disappointed people
felt on learning that the U.S. government was guilty of the kinds of crimes
these authors (including Pynchon) describe -- just as GR readers 10 or more
years older than Pynchon might have difficulty in believing that the U.S.
government could be culpable.

Some of the energy and urgency of GR comes from Pynchon's attempt -- I feel
something almost like desperation -- to get us to wake up and see what's
really going on.  He's been privileged to peek under the covers, things are
not what they seem and the reality is far from reassuring, everything you
know is wrong and what you don't know *can* hurt you. Whether drugs had
anything to do with or not, this has the ring of a certain kind of LSD
insight that used to be quite common -- you just *knew* you were finally
getting a look at things as they are, a reality hidden from people who
hadn't had the opportunity yet, the world we think we know is a sham, it's
a whole different place for "those who know", for those who have been
initiated.

This is how I was responding  when I first read GR when it came out in '73
-- I was using the novel, to a certain extent, as a mirror of what was
going on in my own life at the time, an Army draftee caught up in the whole
Vietnam era madness.  I think some critics (including some Pynchon-L
voices) see what Pynchon is doing here, how completely Pynchon is
shattering confidence in the institutions and illusions that provide
structure and meaning for our miserable little lives, and they
instinctively pull back -- "Pynchon's only playing literary games," they
say, "and he's really not in control because he's a victim of these
unconscious plays of language and consciousness, and as a critic I can play
the game, too, but ultimately it doesn't mean anything, at the end of the
day I'm still at my desk deconstructing his word play."  But I don't think
you can really read Pynchon like that and be honest to what Pynchon's
trying to do. I really think Pynchon is trying to get us to wake up, to see
how we've been fucked over and manipulated and lied to and abused, to know
the Beast for what it is, and to know as well that there's a way to get
beyond it -- once you disengage from it, you're not part of it any more. I
think that's what happens to Slothrop -- whether he manages to transcend
Their bullshit, or whether he goes crazy schizo, he's not part of Their
game any more, he even manages to disengage to the point that he gets out
of the Them/Counterforce duality, he's just not playing their game any
more. Of course this isn't true for Pynchon, he's still firmly engaged --
but his engagement leads him to show us that we have to look deeper and to
keep going deeper until we get some kind of grasp on who we are and what we
are about, and until we do that work we're little more than pawns in their
game. This kind of thinking is profoundly upsetting for many people. It
proved impossible for most of the 60s generation to sustain, after all. The
forces (Governments in Capital's stranglehold) that want us to forget it
are extremely powerful. But just because some of us can't keep it up any
more doesn't mean that Pynchon's insights don't hold.

My opinions, of course, on a rainy day. Your mileage may vary.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.millison.com
http://www.online-journalist.com