pynchon-l-digest V2 #1795

[Ivan Z. Cestero]

doug, great post. i couldn't agree more. 

for me, P's whole PROJECT--the one thing i can consistently see behind all his fiction--is the condition he is trying to describe and debunk. very much with orwell. 

this leads me to a lingering question of mine: what about the fact that this sort of traditional, virtuous idea of 'exposing the evil of the coporate machine of the real world' has itself (at least for MY generation, i believe) been so coopted by pomo irory and political correctness? that is, so corrupted as to cause this backlash of 'stop complaining about being slaves, we're quite free really, and it could be hella worse..."

i don't want to jump into the most stereotyped (and maybe...paranoid) aspects of, say, pomo theory, but the entire purpose of what these guys )from foucault/derrida to baudrillard and jameson and virilio(  are tyring to say is that the "freedom" we've come to enjoy is very much a compromised notion of freedom. a mediated version of it. orwell would have plenty to write about today, jane, i think. down and out in paris and london extended to down and out everywhere. just how far does our everyday personal freedom extend, and what has it in common/how intirniscally is it connected with collective freedomsacross the globe, and who are they that will end up determining the parameters of that freedom: economically, spiritually, etc.        sort of like a state of perpetual motion within a larger humanly constructed set of limits: order. peace through exhaustion. we'll let the kiddies have their fun as long as WE'RE really calling the shots, up here, where they can't really see us enough...at least they can't see enough to stop us. etc. 

i mean, i hate to rely on these ideas that have already been so corrupted by irony and p.c., but it's true, no? isn't pynchon's project that simple on a certain level? 

so my question is: how, if at all, has Pynchon addressed this current state of affairs? i.e. not only is xyz fucked up stuff going on in the world and i'm going to write these complex novels that aply reflect the condition, BUT another hgue roadblock in the resistance is that the resistance itself has been corrupted by the media and by the fashion of cool, by anhedonia, by the whole 'deconstruction has been DONE, man...'; by the whole 'Baudrillard's just a looney trying to make some money, simulacrum my ass...' etc etc.   

input appreciated.

i


--- Doug Millison wrote:
"Jane":
>I will never trust the people that keep talking about Nazis
>and Totalitarianism as if they are George Orwell and we are
>not living in the free world.


Then why read Pynchon? If anything is clear in his books, it's 
precisely that we are not living in a "free world" -- we're captives 
of a system that's driven by profits, technology, the need to control 
through media and deeper levels of cultural conditioning, a system 
that seeks to deny death, that shits its own bed with environmental 
destruction, that kills itself with War; a system in which we are 
complicit to a certain degree but our power pales in comparsion to 
that of the corporate interests that seek to manipulate technology, 
governments, public opinion.  That's the world Pynchon gives us in 
his novels, one in which our choices lie only in a narrow range of 
kindnesses to each other, love, family, community -- see Vineland and 
M&D for his mature expressions of the narrow possibilities for 
happiness in this life.

We can talk about N
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