Human Interactions

[Doug Millison]

At 10:43 AM +1000 7/9/00, jbor wrote:
[snip]
>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.


Luddism = nihilism? I don't think so. I suggest _Rebels Against the 
Future_ by Pynchon's friend Kirkpatrick Sale as a starting point for 
deeper insight into the Luddite project. Anybody is free, of course, 
to read history and deconstruct it; "the sun rises in the west" you 
may say, but some of us will watch the sun come up and disagree. The 
Luddites posed a direct challenge to the terms under which 
industrialization would take place, and sought to put in place an 
alternate vision.  That's light years removed from Blicero's 
nihilistic urge.

I find this way of reading Pynchon less than satisfying. Set aside 
all that he affirms -- that's quite a lot, in fact, beginning with 
the few elements I mentioned previously and which rj's deconstruction 
ignores --  run the rest though a sieve, wring, and blend until the 
brew achieves a featureless grey, then use that to demonstrate that 
the reader's inability to make distinctions is also the author's? 
I'll pass. Among other things, it's safe to assume he creates 
different characters to make distinctions, otherwise why does he 
present this vast cast of characters, instead of just giving us 
Everyman?  Pointsman is Pointsman, and Roger is Roger, Blicero is 
Blicero and Katje is Katje; we can compare and contrast them, but 
they remain separate characters because Pynchon presents them as 
such.  Pynchon's books represent  precisely the series of choices, 
distinctions, and gradations he created and refined through an 
editorial process that included drafting, rewriting, editing.

>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.


Governments and corporations not "entities"? It's far from clear what 
this is supposed to mean.  But, try to "pierce the corporate veil" 
and sue the indidivual officers or employees of a corporation, for 
acts taken by the corporation or in the corporation's name, and 
you'll find out quickly that a corporation is in fact a well-defined 
and well-protected entity that does not equal the individuals who 
make up the corporation, not in law, and not in the way corporations 
work in the real world. Corporations and governments are not 
identical with the people who manage and work for them, nor are they 
identical with the people they serve.  As Pynchon amply demonstrates 
in M&D and GR for starters,  corporations can get away with doing 
things like destroying the environment or waging non-stop War because 
they are larger than the individuals that they integrate, because of 
their privileged legal status, which includes, in U.S. law at least, 
the protections that an individual enjoys plus other protections that 
apply to corporations. Likewise with the government.   The lawyers 
among us can refine this, I'm sure.  Having served as a corporate 
officer, I know a little bit about how this works in the real world.

>  *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.


That is one way to read GR, no question about that. Others disagree.
-- 

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