pynchon-l-digest V2 #1676

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:

 I do  prefer it, the U.S. justice system, to the
alternatives -- the Nazi
> judicial system, for example, or the system of justice in China where
> I've also spent a lot of time. I don't think Pynchon has any
> particular problem with it either, given the way he uses it to
> protect his privacy when necessary.

Well, I would not say that P is a big fan of the American
brand of jurisprudence. And more law doesn't seem to be his
idea of what is needed. But victims of the Holocaust need to
be able to bring charges against individuals, corporations,
and governments. I hope, in the interest of the law, the
victims and the accused, that no case, no evidence is
compromised by what I still maintain is less than prudent
journalism. The NY Times went over to the dark side twenty
years ago. The Sunday paper is a little better than the
weekly. 



Gotta love Richard E. Burket's essay in the OCULR, "The
State Law Enforcement Apparatus As America: Authority,
Arbitrariness, And The 'Force Of Law' in Vineland" 

> 
> But I agree, Pynchon does render poetic justice to Marvy, doesn't he,
> emasculating that drugstore cowboy flower of the U.S.
> military-industrial complex, which, after WWII, also includes von
> Braun, Blicero, and other Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, companies that
> played and profited from both sides during WWII, the U.S. government
> polititicians that support them (recall that Ike is said to have
> edited out of his famous speech a reference to a U.S.
> military-industrial-government complex, or something quite close to
> that, I don't have the reference at hand).

Don't forget his love of white death and his hate for things
black. 
Marvy could be read as a personification not only of the
Military-Industrial-Complex, American White Hat Law
enforcement at home and abroad, but Racist Amerikkka and
it's culture of white Death. 


> --Richard Locke, reviewing GR in the New York Times, March 11, 1973


That's a good one.