Pynchon's Luddite politics

[Doug Millison]

It's precisely the distinction between government and corporations 
that Pynchon erases in his writing (I ignore his personal political 
beliefs and speak only of the politics evident in his writings), in 
my reading of his work.  Corporations, and the specific individuals 
and forces that in turn control corporations, play governments like a 
piano (to pick up a metaphor somebody else used on the P-list 
recently), in GR, in M&D, in Vineland, throughout his writings. Ample 
contemporary evidence in the real world confirms Pynchon's artistic 
vision of corporations (and their directors and shareholders) bending 
governments and people to their will, but that probably carries no 
relevance for literary criticism of his works other than to 
demonstrate the prescience of his art. The symbiosis between 
corporations and governments is complete and mutually reciprocal, the 
boundaries between them extremely porous, both in this world and in 
the world of Pynchon's writing.  Which controls the other?  Follow 
the money.

I just don't see -- in Pynchon's world or in contemporary society -- 
a "separation of economy and state"; the economy is the state.  Thus 
I find bizarre, both in the world and in the context of Pynchon's 
writings, the statement that "neither governments nor corporations 
have the power to manipulate or exploit citizens/consumers in ways 
that can't be easily counteracted."

"Easily counteracted" if prepared to take the survivalist wacko route 
with a bag of Kruggerands, bomb shelter, and guns, I suppose.  Even 
then, escape is far from complete.

How do Pynchon's characters free themselves from the influences of 
Them, which can reach all the way down to the deepest and most 
intimate levels of personal, dream, subconscious experience?  They 
don't.

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