Pynchon ain't paranoid

[wood jim]

I'm not sure that Paranoia has been overemphasized.
It's very important to P's fiction. It's very
important to the Post WWII novel. It's very important
to the Romantics, in a metaphysical/religious sort of
way. 

But when Hollander compares P's own Paranoia to Ezra
Pound's, it must give us pause. 

Remember that when Mussolini declared war on Britain
and France Pound began to broadcast speeches over Rome
Radio. He was insisting that Mussolini was "for peace"
which, by then (late 1940), required him to
rationalize away such overwhelming evidence to the
contrary that his view of the international political
situation seemed clearly Paranoid.  He had convinced
himself that because Mussolini's main goal was
economic justice, he must also be antiwar. For Pound,
to oppose Mussolini was to oppose economic justice and
peace, so Roosevelt and Churchill were usurers'
puppets and warmongers, who had forced their countries
into a war they knew they could not win. Mussolini's
choice of Hitler as ally "proved" to             Pound
that the Führer was not a warmonger, so Pound
convinced himself that the real villains were a
conspiracy of international--predominantly
Jewish--bankers. As his paranoia increased, what had
been denunciations of bankers became anti-Semitic
allegations about a Jewish plot to undermine gentile
culture.

Hollander seems to attribute a Paranoia to Pynchon,
albeit sympathetic in his view, that is not unlike
Pounds. It's almost Pound's Paranoia in reverse. Or am
I mad? Way out of line? 

What explains the Paranoia in Farina's BDSL? When you
read BDSL and CL49 and GR together, it's obvious that
P and Farina were writing from a common experience.
But it's the Cold War and not any personal
disinheritance or revenge that echoes through these
fictions. 

In DeLillo's novels, a current of conspiracy,
paranoia, and terrorism often move the hands of time
while         alienated protagonist drift in and out
of events that define the century, including of
course, the political suspense of the Cold War.

Like P, Burroughs's tendency to present underdogs
sympathetically, or at least with a knowing           
 understanding, corresponds to an implicit
philosophical assumption that for some people --
primarily the people for whom Burroughs is writing --
psychic survival in a world gone awry might depend on
altering one's mental state through almost any means
available.


In the Luddite essay P praises Mary Shelly's
Frankenstein. Like CL49, it is something of a feminist
novel and like V. it is something of Luddite fiction.
Remember, Shelly plagues Frankenstein with bad health.
As he engages in his two experiments, he is tormented
by fevers, heart palpitations, nervous fits,
depression, and of course, Paranoia. His physical
exhaustion is finally so great that he dies.  Nature
further punishes Victor by preventing him from
creating a normal child: his lack of empathy first
causes him to create a giant (simply because the
"minuteness of the [normal-sized] parts formed a great
hindrance to my speed") and then leads to a series of
disasters that prevent him from normal procreation
with his bride Elizabeth. 

This is something we find a variation on in P's "The
Secret Integration", "Lowlands", "Small Rain", V., GR,
M&D, VL, (of course the Wasteland and I suspect
Ulysses is also a source here). 

Finally, nature pursues Victor Frankenstein with the
very electricity and fire he has stolen from her. The
lightning, thunder, and rain that surround Victor as
he carries on his experiments are not just the
conventional atmospheric effects of the Gothic novel
(nor are the Spherics in V. etc) but also a
manifestation of nature's elemental powers. Like the
Furies, nature pursues Victor to his hiding places,
destroying not only Victor but his family, friend, and
servant. By Job! Finally, the penalty of violating
nature is death.  Encoded in Frankenstein is an
alternative to Victor's view of nature as female and
to be penetrated or as dead matter to be reassembled
at will. 

Also, the epi/onto problem for Oedipa  is Romantic.
Well, at least the Lawyer is Hollywood cute.
Frankenstein persistently raises the two philosophical
questions that haunted all the Romantic            
writers of the period: What is being? And how do we
know what we know? These are the ontological and
epistemological questions David Hume and Immanuel Kant
had tried to answer, and these are the questions with
which both Victor Frankenstein and his Creature are
wrestling. Victor sets out to answer the question
"whence did the principle of life proceed?" And the
Creature insistently demands, "Who was I? What was I?
Whence did I come? What was my destination?"

P read lots of Poe. Paranoia kills in Poe. 

And Conrad? And Eliot? And Hemingway? 

And….


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