V.V. (14) dog days (was Sure sign of madness)

[jbor]

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>From: calbert at tiac.net

> love,
> cfa, who promises that once he leaves the office, he cannot spam
> the list further until monday.....

Thanks, cfa, your posts over the past few days have been a joy to read.
Certainly worth keeping the ball rolling until you return.

>
> There is a passage in V dealing with the "dog days" of August.....it
> details the toll of various accidents and disasters around the world...I
> cannot glean any intent to make corporations liable.......Why is this
> passage there?
>
>
> "These were mass deaths. There were also the attendant maimed,
> malfunctioning, homeless, lorn. It happens every month in a
> succession of encounters between groups of living and a congruent
> world which simply does not care. Look in any yearly Almanac,
> under "Disasters" - which is where the figures above come from.
> The BUSINESS IS TRANSACTED month after month after month."
>
> (V, Pgs. 290-1, Perennial/Harper& Row)
>
> This is not Stencil, Mondaugen or Van Wijk speaking - it is
> undeniably the author.....
>


Indeed it is. And, it's also significant that it's placed in the subsection
which explores Mafia Winsome's character and motivations. For, that listing
of natural disasters in the middle of the narrative is very reminiscent of a
favourite literary strategy of Ayn Rand's: the invocation of a list of
fictional almanac items in _Atlas Shrugged_ (Signet, pp. 1002-1003) being
one I can lay my hands on just now, but there are several. Two points:

1) Pynchon had read his Rand. Not that he agrees with her in any way shape,
or form, mind you, but he obviously felt that it was important to apprise
himself of the fine detail of the populist base which is bolstering "the
System" in order to address that "System". (And, while he was at it, he
pynched a device or two.)

2) Nature, as depicted in Pynchon's fiction, is as often (more so, in fact)
on the wrong side of the Life/Death equation, as cfa has said:

    "The world started to run more and more afoul of the inanimate." (290.2)

best


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                         Words for Salman Rushdie

                Our thanks to you and to Marianne Wiggins
       for recalling those of us who write to our duty as heretics,
 for reminding us again that power is as much our sworn enemy as unreason,
            for making us all look braver, wiser, more useful
                        than we often think we are.

                  We pray for your continuing good health,
                       safety and lightness of spirit.

                                         Thomas Pynchon, 12 March 1989
                                       _The New York Times Book Review_

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