pynchon-l-digest V2 #1794

[Doug Millison]

"Jane"
"this argument is a misreading of the books or
because Pynchon is an artist and not a political activist,
his books are art and not political manifestos"

That's an opinion not all critics and readers can share. The political
content of Pynchon's fiction has been commented on in article after article
in the critical literature.  A significant thread in the hostile reception
of Vineland was that Pynchon laid out so clearly his sympathies with a 60's
radical political line and the longer history of U.S. labor activism that
feeds into that line. If Pynchon is only interested in making artistic
statements, why does he choose again and again to deal with political,
historical, economic material in his works? Why doesn't he just start from
scratch and invent characters and settings and political situations instead
of working with the world that we know?

To state that "collective organized political struggle is debunked in P's
fiction" eliminates quite a bit of Pynchon's nuance in this regard -- in his
creation of characters like Leni Pokler and Frenesi, P shows enormous
sympathy; his fictional context includes the prompts necessary to send us to
other texts wherein we can read the complex story of the protest movements
they support. Pynchon gives us every reason to understand why they choose to
act the way they do. The reasons for the failures of the protests they join
are seen to be complex -- generally, they are co-opted or betrayed by Their
agents or by forces under Their control.  If anything, P's fiction shows us
that people quite naturally protest against totalitarian governments and
that their protests often fail because They have overwhelming force at Their
disposal.  That's bitter commentary on a real-world truth, but it hardly
amounts to "debunking" organized political struggle.