GRGR Finale Re: Homophobia in GR?

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, jbor wrote:

> But the thing I'm interested in is how a literary text -- or any text, for
> that matter, whether it be a propagandist song, a movie, a history book, or
> a Disney cartoon -- is able to mould, manipulate, or *change* readers'
> attitudes. It's something which I think Pynchon in *GR* is also very cued
> into. My point is that if a reader approaches the text with preconceived
> prejudices in place, strictly refusing to budge on some or all of these
> attitudes -- eg. all Nazis are evil, homosexuality is a sin, sexual
> dominance is victimisation, tribal cultures are primitive and inferior, etc
> -- then he or she is forced to invent elaborate interpretations and
> justifications *in spite of* what is plainly written in the text, forced to
> *deny* the text, in effect, in order to sustain those preconceptions.

I do think it's possible for a book to change a reader's attitudes and
this would naturally be in inverse proportion with the readers age (after 
a while things are set in concrete), so that I myself am a terrible test
subject with respect to GR because I was already well into middle age when
GR came out so there wasn't much in it that was terribly new to my way of
thinking. I certainly didn't come to the book thinking homosexuality was a
sin or that all Nazis were evil or that sexual dominance wasn't if not a
law of nature a very close approximation to it. On traditional cultures I
at least knew that I would be crucified at cocktail parties if I ever
expressed any doubt about the correctness of cultural relativism. I'm  a
little less doctirinare on the subject now but still essentially tow the
line. I must say I thought at the time, like davemarc, that the book was
very very hard on homosexuality. However I merely thought that P was more
or less exploiting the subject for good literary purpose. It never
occurred to me that P might not himself have the most enlightened views on
the subject. It would just be hard on the sensibilities of some readers I
thought and this made me a tiny bit sad. Now I'm over that. Homosexuals
are likely to face above average difficulty in any society of the
foreseeable future. The amount of discomfort they will additionally suffer
from P's use of their particular situation  (to good purpose I still
feel) will not tip the scales appreciably. Art has its rights. Also on
the topic of exploitation I had felt a little funny at the time of
V. about the use of the cruelties and sexual exploitation of colonialism
to spice up the first novel--to make it more sensational and titilating. I
was more scrupulous then and no doubt about it. By GR--and the seriousness
with which by that time P was taken--I'd revised that opinion to some
degree at least. 

Anyway, I just talking about me. More generally I know p-listers have from
time to time been heard to say that GR changed their lives. So there you
are. I truly don't know how this works. I don't consider P a writer who
tries to control his readers. In a way this is a weakness I think but
in another light it may well also be a virtue. Personally, I like to have
my brain pushed around a little. I want to do the Coleridge suspended
belief thing. P's surface language I find supreme but it doesn't push me
along anywhere. Maybe I'm missing something. Let me close by asking this
question. Does anyone feel a sense of suspended belief in reading Pynchon?

			P.