Human Interactions

[jbor]

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>From: JEANNIE BERNIER <JEANNIE.BERNIER at morningstar.com>
>

> but
> corporations are just stupid, not evil.

Yes, I think this is one of the key things Pynchon hits on as well,
particularly in his depictions of those executives at Shell Mex House in
*GR*, or Lyle Bland, or that conversation between Clive Mossmoon and Sir
Marcus Scammony right at the end of Part 3 (GR 615-6). And, of course,
there's Mucho Maas in *Vineland* who (in one of those "retours des
personnages" that McHale offers as another defining characteristic of
postmodernist fiction) has become a "music industry biggie" (VL 307). Mucho
has forsaken the "beautiful certainty" induced by psychedelic drugs (VL
314), and I don't think the reader is expected to have forgotten what Mucho
was *really* like back in the 60s (in *Lot 49*) when he launches into that
anti-Tube tirade which is tinged with all the effete nostalgia and impotent
envy of the failed or pseudo-radical ("It was the way people used to talk",
quips the narrative.) These are the people who head up those supposedly
"evil" corporations, and like the military and political leaders Pynchon
depicts -- Blicero and Pointsman and Pudding and ... Reagan and Nixon --
they are not personifications of "evil" at all but merely flawed and frail
humans who have sold out:
     "We're all going to fail," Sir Marcus primping his curls, "but the
   Operation won't." (GR 616)
I think it is probably a very comfortable way to read Pynchon's work, to set
up that we and "They" distinction in order to exonerate ourselves from the
inequities and cruelty which pepper the spectacle of human history which he
depicts. But, as we know, Pynchon resists simple binaries like this. The
"They" isn't a personal pronoun in *GR* at all: it signifies systems and
institutions in which *we* are implicated, which *we* accept and perpetuate.
*"They"* 'r' Us.

And this is why I think that Kurt-Werner's (was it?) idea of separating the
list into a "political" and a "literary" discussion of Pynchon's work falls
short of the mark. For starters, the political and literary "content" (and
philosophical, scientific, historical, submerged biographical et. al. stuff)
is there in *all* of the texts, so categorising *GR* as "literary" and
*Vineland* as "political" is rather simplistic, and quite unproductive imo.
But more than this I think it is crucial that the *literary* devices of
Pynchon's fiction do draw the reader into the text: over and over we are
"conned, bullied, betrayed, embarrassed, conditioned, lured, offended"; all
those confronting verbs that McHale uses and Terrance is offended by. And in
so doing this to the poor conditioned reader sitting there by the fireplace
in our comfortable First World buffer zones expecting a ripping good yarn
which will thrill and amaze and make us feel good about ourselves and who we
are in the world, what we get instead is this unremitting foregrounding of
his and our own complicity in the terrible and atrocious socio-political
tableaux which he depicts with unerring and relentless tenacity. Sure, it's
a zany and surreal vision of the world at times, but it is always distinctly
and recognisably *our* world, and there are moments, as when "the narrator"
is driven to the brink of despair by his own complacency and powerlessness
and goes off to watch a seventh rerun of the Takeshi and Ichiko sitcom on
the tube (GR 738), or when he (sic) lays bare the very bones of his personal
life during the time of the novel's writing and quasi-parenthetically
asks/challenges his editors "Do you want to put this part in?"(GR 739),
where the honesty of and accusation in the tone and tenor of the text are
excruciating.

And so I think that it is important to speak out and challenge, in Mike
Weaver's words, the readings of "those who are made uncomfortable by
political commitment and therefore try (maybe unconsciously) to cast doubt
on the certainty of TP's politics." Indeed, Mike is perhaps being generous:
I'm sometimes left with the impression that some of the more irresponsible
and inaccurate interpretations and subjects and modus operandi proffered
here are less disingenuous than they appear, not "unconscious" at all but
essentially self-righteous, self-serving and self-justifying *diversions*.
I'm not sure that I can share in that confidence of knowing what TP's
personal politics actually are (he may well drive his V8 Chevy convertible
the three blocks to the local Quickie-Mart for a six-pack of Duff and pack
of Laramie 150s, leer condescendingly into the dusky cleavage of the subdeb
Latino cutie behind the counter, chuck a few quick doughnuts in the carpark
and then throw polystyrene Krustyburger cartons out the car window all the
way back home for all I know about him from the texts), or if I fully
understand what that "certainty" is in fact meant to be, or even if I quite
get the definition of "politics" as it applies or is being applied. But I
know that his fiction makes me think about the world as it is -- as it was,
as it has become, as it is becoming -- and my relationship to this world;
and I know that this is what it is intended to do as well. There aren't
simple-minded answers to the dilemmas Pynchon poses, like "blame it on the
Tube", "blame it on Internet marketers", "blame it on the corporations",
"blame it on the government". Simplistic interpretations like this are the
epitome of denial, all they are in fact saying is "I'm alright Jack, so
screw you." There is a spectrum of political resistance perhaps, from the
extremist Luddite guerilla tactics of the Unabomber & co right through to
those who pander to the system they affect so to despise: I'm not certain
that, on the evidence of his texts, Pynchon is at one end of that rainbow or
the other, or whether he doesn't shift about within it from time to time and
text to text. What I am sure of, however, is that, taken together, his
texts, and his absence from public life, do comprise, along with whatever
other merits they may have, a vigorous socio-cultural critique.

Thank you for your indulgence. I apologise if this has seemed splenetic.

best


    ... you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.
                                                       Eldridge Cleaver