Human Interactions

[Doug Millison]

Yeah, and if I had the time, rj, I could use statistics to show you 
how the state of Rhode Island is actually bigger than Texas.   You 
rail against "simplistic interpretations" -- and present a tangled 
critique that would appear to make Pynchon a defender of corporate 
power and privilege -- but a few things in Pynchon are clear and 
simple, his writing does present some unambiguous moral judgements. 
His work affirms nature and condemns the companies, individuals, and 
forces that rape the earth. His work consistently exposes the ills of 
Fascism and colonialism and  holds up the Holocaust, and other crimes 
of genocide, for the horrors they are. His work consistently 
critiques  the way humans are becoming more like machines, and the 
way we continue to surrender more power to machines and the systems 
of which the machines are a part.  He uses hundreds, thousands, of 
pages to articulate narratives in which unpleasant and painful 
realities of human existence are traced back to the actions of 
impersonal entities (Corporations, to name one) and forces (the War) 
with the help of the rest of us, usually through coercion in one form 
or another. He holds up some faint hope, in the simple acts of love 
and kindness that his characters, occasionally, manage to extend to 
each other; his mature work, in M&D, can be read as a study of the 
redeeming power, and limitations, of human love and relationships. 
Clearly, he implicates all of us in all that's going on, but in no 
way does he let corporations and other perpetrators off the hook. 
These are not conclusions dear only to me, but in fact have been 
repeated and affirmed throughout the body of Pynchon criticism. Using 
obfuscating prose to read Pynchon as an endorsement of corporations 
and deny any political certainties in his writing would seem to put 
you, rj, in with "those who are made uncomfortable by political 
commitment and therefore try (maybe unconsciously) to cast doubt on 
the certainty of TP's politics." Perhaps you're getting Pynchon mixed 
up with Ayn Rand again.
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