Human Interactions

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>

> but Pynchon
> brings in Brock Vond, frail and human sell out too, and he
> transforms him at times, as he does with Blicero and Marvy,

Yes, there is very little to redeem Marvy, and Brock Vond and he do seem to
be given just deserts in a way that runs counter to the actuality of the
historical situation(s). Is Marvy's castration a romanticisation I wonder?

I like your comparisons with James and Conrad, too: Slothrop is very much a
variation on the theme of the American ingenue abroad, and there is a
plumbing of that heart of darkness which underlies Western "civilisation" in
the novel as well.

>
> But They are doomed. They will fail, but we are not, we
> don't have to fail. How we succeed in the system we cannot
> escape is what Pynchon's seems to hold up to the reader.

I think there are glimmerings of hope, other possibilities, alongside the
cautionary cyber-fable of Spenglerian Apocalyptic doom which *GR* portrays:
Slothrop "escapes" (from the system of the novel, itself another oppressive
regime); there is a certain magic which saves the brothers, Enzian and
Tchitcherine, from their otherwise inevitable fate; love is temporary
respite, as Charles Mason and his Rebekah in *M&D* discover; death is also
an escape ("He that dies pays all debts", as Shakespeare's Stefano reminds
Trinculo); and so is that (Sublime? Rilkean?) obliteration of the planet
Blicero seems to cherish (and which is the note the novel closes on), in a
nihilistic, Luddite sense of getting what we asked for.

I'm not suggesting that Pynchon is "a defender of corporate
power and privilege" of course (which is yet another example of the type of
convenient and self-serving misreading of what someone else has written that
out and out reactionaries so adore), far from it, but that it is humans like
us who every day co-operate with and perpetuate these systems and routines
of power and privilege. Governments and corporations aren't "entities" at
all: they are the tools and systems through which one group of humans are
able to exercise control over other groups. But, they are not "evil" in and
of themselves, and nor even are the humans who, knowingly or not, sell out
to become agents of these systems because eventually the system is going to
chew them up and spit them out too. If Blicero is an "evil" Nazi then so is
Katje; if Pointsman is an "evil" scientist then so is Roger; if Pudding is
an "evil" war-monger then so is Pirate; if Brock Vond is "evil" then so is
Frenesi. Certainly, the horrors are there, but it's this act of assigning
blame which Pynchon problematises (eg. Frans van der Groov), and he
demonstrates that by taking that convenient and simple option ("They" did it
-- the Germans, or the government, or the CEOs -- so "They" are "evil", and
less than human, and, lesser than "Us") we are denying our own complicity
and our shared bio-genetic and socio-cultural heritages with Them (no less
than with Their Preterite victims) and just setting up a variation on the
same dynamic (that there Conterforce, for example, where "everyone seems to
be at *least* a double agent" 543). Morality is always a system too; the
same sort of moralities about sins and sinners and retribution for evils
committed are what originated and justified the horrors of colonialism and
genocide and war in the first place. *GR* is beyond such (un?)reconstructed
moralising. Pynchon seeks to understand what makes people and their systems
tick, more than simply coming on like some literary Judge Judy and
declaiming who the good guys and who the bad guys are.

Man is "zoon politikon", as Marx reminded us: everything humans do is
"political" -- not in that narrow sense of whether Pynchon will vote for
Bush Jr or Gore, or abstain altogether (that's the one imo) -- but in the
way that all of our actions and interactions are ideologically
circumscribed. It's all very well to rant and rave about the "evils" of the
system and then go back to our "for-hire work", conveniently forgetting that
this is what the system is all about. I'm sure there's an insult for that,
too.

best


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