Sure sign of madness, wasRE: globalization & Pynchon?

[calbert at tiac.net]

Doug:

> But I don't agree that people are helpless in the face of Nature. 
> Nature may overwhelm us, but we can still choose what we try to do.

but what is at issue is what P. suggests in his novels........and I 
would argue that the passage from V that I cited is unambiguously in 
HIS voice.....and I can't turn that passage any other way.....  
> 
> Are you arguing that Pynchon's novels show us humanity at the mercy of
> natural forces?  No agency at all?

Natural forces are a subset of the greater set "phenomena" which 
include those informed by human intelligence........again, if you 
have access to the Wright citations, take another look...to argue 
against "agency" is not novel - it is in fact in a noble tradition.....

  I think that would be an eminently
> debatable proposition.

I have little interest in any rhetorical "victory", I'm far more 
concerned to see what I feel is a relevant element of P's 
"cosmology" debated.... and in MY view the search for "agency" is 
clearly a central theme in his novels, and I don't think it would be 
outrageous to suggest that P offers succor to neither character nor 
reader engaged in such an effort.....Where do the searches of 
Hugh Godolphin, Oedipa Maas, Stencil and others arrive? Certainly 
not at any satisfactory resolution.....

> Pokler has been duped and abused by the system, no doubt, and the
> limits of his personal responsibility for the dead and dying Dora
> slave laborers are difficult to establish -- still he exercises a
> choice.  He stops and makes a gesture of kindness and solidarity, and
> conveys an object real exchange value, when he commiserates with the
> dying woman and slips his gold wedding band on her finger. He chooses
> to do this. He could have chosen to leave in disgust without engaging
> anybody in any fashion.

That Pynchon recognizes no agency does not suggest that he 
abandons all hope.....au contraire, I suspect that, though he 
lampoons the notion by putting it in the "mouth" of Mafia Winsome, 
the power to overcome despair lies in "heroic love".....

and this is where I get to drop the name Paul Pena......though 
recently re-discovered (Mongol Blues?, and recent issue of an old 
recording session featuring among others, Jerry Garcia) this author 
of Steve Millers "Jet Airliner" wrote a song back in the early 70s 
called
"Something to make you happy".....I nominate this obscure 
masterpiece as the anthem of Pynchon nation......and will let the list 
know when I have figured out how to eliminate static hum from my 
turntable so I can generate cassette copies.....

love,
cfa