Chapter V: There are millions of stories...

[wood jim]

> 
>     It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even
> of defiance. But it was
>     a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the
> Republic, from its
>     machinery. Whatever else was being denied them
> out of hate, indifference
>     to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple
> ignorance, this withdrawal
>     was their own, unpublicized, private. Since they
> could not have
>     withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had
> to exist the separate,
>     silent, unsuspected world. (86.8)
> 
> This for me is perhaps the most vivid encapsulation
> of what "the Trystero"
> is meant to represent. I can see in this "calculated
> withdrawal" a
> reflection of Gandhi's passive resistance,
> conscientious objectors to
> enlistment in the U.S. forces to serve in Vietnam.
> Most of all I can see a
> celebrated author who has chosen to abjure "the life
> of the Republic, ...
> its machinery," whose "withdrawal" is his "own,
> unpublicized, private."
> 
> Bartleby: "I would prefer not to."
> 
> The disinherited in this novel become the Preterite
> in _GR_, but the vision
> that is beginning to bloom in Pynchon's work is that
> the "They" is actually
> a non-human system which dispossesses *all*
> individuals, a sum of parts
> where the parts don't matter at all, just as Koteks
> describes "teamwork" in
> the brave new corporatised workplace which serves to
> "stifle" individuality
> and invention, just like the vocal unison of the
> Yoyodyne stockholders (sad
> interchangeable old men), just like the false
> "consensus" of democratic
> election ("indifference to the power of their
> vote"). What Oedipa witnesses
> are communities beyond and beneath the mantle, a
> "separate, silent,
> unsuspected world." There is an ambivalence about
> the various
> manifestations: they range from the black marketeers
> of the Cosa Nostra to
> Death Cults to lunatic dolphin-worshippers; just as
> there is an ambivalence
> about "The Counterforce" in _GR_ and counterforces
> and counter-cultures in
> general throughout all the texts. But the common
> feature which brings them
> together is this conscious "withdrawal"
> ("calculated" has an even stronger
> resonance) from the workings of The System.
> 
> best

There is clearly an  ambivalence toward withdrawal or 
a calulated "I prefer not to." This is a poilitcs,
that is another side  of the same coin,  that is, it 
is also in love with its own Death. So, for example, 
the executive, replaced by the IBM, doesn't simply 
withdraw. From  a wire photo, he gets  the
Religious/Political act of protest. An act  by a monk
and  makes a mockery of it. And in act of suicide he
receives a sign (not a religious sign) and he decides
that his problem is love. He decides that he finished
with love (charity) and community. What is the guy in
the bar doing there anyway? Is he a tourist or a
voyeur? He's not looking for love. He doesn't swing in
any direction. Oed in this scene remind me of Bartleby
more than the withdrawn IA. 



    
 


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