Government Lies?

[Otto Sell]

Terrance wrote:
"I have no idea why we would want to discuss the S.S. System or the U.S.
government budget here."

I must admit that I deleted all those "Government Lies?-posts" except this
one because I thought the question was stupid. It goes without saying that
every government everywhere necessarily lies, has lied and will continue to
lie.
Hey guys and gals, we've had 15 years of Helmut Kohl - what do you expect me
to believe?
But I've got nothing against US-members discussing their home politics here,
it's nice to lurk.

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2000 12:56 PM
Subject: Re: Government Lies?


> This is the Pynchon list. What we discuss is up to us. I
> will post about the religion in the novel V.. I will do so
> not because I am religious woman or because I believe in god
> or because I think Pynchon is a religious man or believes in
> god. I will do so not as a preacher or moralizer and not
> because I believe Pynchon is preaching to his readers or is
> a moralizer. I will do so because I think religion is a very
> important  subject in Pynchon's books. I think The Education
> of Henry Adams and Mount Saint Michel and Chartres is an
> important source for this novel. This novel opens with the
> Catholic Virgin--Christmas EVE, she has been "shadowed",
> like Oedipa Mass, it ends with Astarte, between, on 533
> pages in my edition, religion is discussed more than any
> other subject. If you don't want to read posts that discuss
> the religious subjects in TRP's fiction, filter all of my
> posts, because most of them, will include quotes from the
> novel V. and the major sources Pynchon used to write it.
>
Only because he writes so much about Religion doesn't necessarily mean that
he's a "religious man" as you wrote. If his target is Western
Civilization -and I think you are right here- this targeting cannot be
thought of without attacks on the System of Organized Religions who are
responsible for lying at the people for more than 2000 years - just like the
Governments. Cannot be thought without attacking the claim that History is
able to tell the Truth. Cannot be thought without the attack on the claim
that the Spoken Word stands above the script.

"Historians undertake to arrange sequences,--called stories, or
histories,--assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect." - The
Education of Henry Adams, from:
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/adams.html
- many nice quotes on that. Adams uses scientific terminology and "laws" to
explain cultural processes. This "mapping" like Leni explains on p. 159 of
GR TRP has taken over from Adams. And done so ingeniously.

"In der Tat bringt Pynchon mehrfach und überdeutlich V. und Stencils
besessene Suche nach V. mit den geschichtstheoretischen Spekulationen von
Henry Adams in Verbindung, der dem ungebrochenen Evolutions- und
Fortschrittsoptimismus der spätviktorianischen Epoche mit dem Sprengsatz des
2. thermodynamischen Gesetzes zu Leibe gerückt war. Ordnung, so heißt es in
seiner Autobiographie, sei Projektion des menschlichen Bewußtseins gegen die
Übermacht des natürlichen Chaos, von dem es sich umgeben wisse; und wie
jedes System betreibe auch das der abendländischen Kultur in einem nicht
umkehrbaren Prozess den eigenen Verfall. Indem es Energie verbrauche und
freisetze, baue es sich selber ab, strebe es nach einem Endzustand der
radikalen Demokratie und Gleichwahrscheinlichkeit aller seiner Elemente. Die
religiöse Ordnung der Jungfrau und Gottesmutter (sinnfällig verkörpert in
der Kathedrale von Chartres) und das neue Imperium der elektrischen Turbine
(deren Anblick Adams 1900 auf der Pariser Weltausstellung den Atem
verschlug) - in dieser Gegenüberstellung glaubte er die bestürzende Tendenz
der abendländischen Geschichte zu erkennen: Kulturelle Energie wird zuerst
allmählich, dann immer schneller, zuletzt in sprunghafter Beschleunigung von
eben jenen Kräften aufgesogen, mit deren Zähmung sie sich zugleich selbst
entmachtet: <<Die Natur läuft dem Geist davon<< - nicht Millenium steht am
Ende der Geschichte, sondern Zusammenbruch und Auflösung."
(Heinz Ickstadt: Fiktion, Geschichte und der Dämon der Verfalls in V. und
The Crying of Lot 49, in: Gerhard Hoffmann (Ed.), Der zeitgenössische
amerikanische Roman: Von der Moderne zur Postmoderne, Band 3, p. 249)

> This is hobby for me, I don't post about religion in TRP's
> fiction to convert people or do the good works of whatever
> gods there may be. Be that as it may, I contend that TRP
> writes about religion and that he  is a satirist. I contend
> that his target is Western Civilization. I contend the Novel
> V. is not a post modernist fiction. I contend that it is not
> a fable of subversion. It is a satire and it is corrective.
>
If it is not postmodern what else do you call it? It is not Pre-modern in
the sense of 19th-century mimetic literature. It is not Modern in the sense
of Joyce and other Avantgardists of the beginning of the 20th century. It is
definitely something else. I never insisted on the name "Postmodern" 'cause
it's useless arguing about the name. Let's leave that to later generations.
But the literary techniques and the techniques of analyzing highly complex,
"esoterical" (means: unreadable for the common reader) literature since the
later Joyce and Beckett have been collected under the label of
Postmodernism. Satire is a necessary element of postmodernist fiction. See
Ihab Hassan on this.

> When I argued, during GRGR, that TRP takes a strong moral
> position on Gender, I was applauded, but if I argue the same
> on other issues, not PC and popular these days, I will
> ridiculed.  Here, in our V.V., these early chapters,  the
> treatment of women is outrageous and TRP's has sharpened his
> satirical teach to bite the male YOU--there are two such
> addresses to the reader here in the early chapters--right on
> the ass. Deal with it.
>
> Jane
>

The treatment of woman is outrageous indeed in much of Pynchon's fiction as
it is in reality too. Why should he lie about that?

I agree with you that TRP takes a very high moral point - against the
hypocrisy of religious preaching that on one hand says "Love each other" and
on the other hand has no problem treating women as the "evil" in the world,
hating the Jews, considering "white male Christian" as supremative above
every other, trading slaves, expropriating the "brother" - either in the
form of the weaker and not so clever co-civilian or in the form of
underdeveloped countries - the Third World.
We all know that the "Virgin Mary" cult has been incorporated into
Christianity from earlier fertility deitis. But it's been a trick - to keep
women under control for 2000 years. Nothing sacred about it.

Otto