Pynchon's Badass

[David Morris]

Thanks for the clarification.  I can't disagree w/ anything you've written 
here.  But, hmmm, how did you expect one to get all this from your first 
post?  I know, you'd just rolled out of bed...

DM

>From: "Phil Wise"
>
>Hmmmn (scratches head)
>
>I may be a little wobbly on this part of the book (it is a novel that does
>that...) and I'm not as intimate with the miniature of the text as you.
>However, I tend to understand Blicero/Weissmann as a fascist in the
>psychological terms set out by Klaus Theweleit in Male Fantasies (a
>contestible reading I admit, but one with considerable persuasive power for
>me).  It seems to me that the proto-fascist there fears death within, as a
>component of the bodily process, but desires a transcendent, firey 
>death(one
>the "spirit" can survive, perhaps).  B/W's characterisation of corporeal
>life as "infection and death" is a negative reading of nature (if you 
>like),
>which sets it up in a binary opposition to extremely romantic version of
>love he also sets up, one that has no reference to bodies at all.
>
>I think that by characterising life as a cycle of infection and death, he
>may be reading negatively the sort of "low" natural processes elsewhere 
>seem
>to be associated positively with the preterite (cf Roger and Pig at "their"
>dinner, announcing "snot stew" and so on).  Pynchon associates the 
>rejection
>and denial of such processes as an end-product of "rationalism", which is
>what I think the diversion onto the toiletship the text takes is about.
>
>Especially since Brock Vond is so clearly based on a reading of Theweliet,
>and that in Vineland Pynchon makes no bones about calling a fascist a
>fascist, I have no trouble with the idea that Pynchon was forming similar
>views as to the psychology of a fascist in his portrayal of Weissmann in 
>GR,
>intentional fallacy or not.  Please be clear: W/B is a very complex
>character; I don't intend that fascist is used as a pejoritive but rather 
>as
>descriptive, a tool to help understand him.  In Theweleit's terms, Their
>existence on a high plain, bodiless, links Them with fascism.
>
>
>So, yes, the psychological reality W/B inhabits leads him to read corporeal
>life as a cycle of infection and death, just as the psychological reality
>Slothrop inhabits leads him to read the world as overloaded with meanings.
>So, I guess i'm disagreeing with you're clarification - I think he is
>talking about nature's cycle; I don't see that he rejects his fascism, and 
>I
>do believe that he is a fascist.
>
>Regards
>Phil
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>To: <philwise at paradise.net.nz>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:10 AM
>Subject: Re: Pynchon's Badass
>
>
> >
> > After a bit more thought I believe I understand your point, at least in
> > part.  You are saying that to W/B there is no other cycle.  He doesn't
>even
> > see a Natural Cycle against his own/Theirs.  I might agree with this, 
>but
>I
> > wouldn't call it a fascist thing.  This is just the way W/B percieves 
>the
> > real world to be, and in a way common to Their people, just much more
> > intensely felt by W/B.
> >
> > DM
> >
> >
> > >From: "Phil Wise"
> > > > >
> > > > >"I want to break out--to leave this cycle of infection and
> > > > >death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I
> > > > >will be gathered, inseparable, in the radiance of what we
> > > > >would be come...." GR.724
> > > > >
> > >
> > >Apologies for butting in here, but, given the fascist terror of the
> > >corporeal body and their desire to transcend it (into a machine-like
>body,
> > >be it an actual machine or the "machine" of the military, or in death
>this
> > >purity of light W/B refers to) could it be that W/B is merely 
>expressing
> > >his fascism here?  In other words, that it isn't the "cycle of 
>infection
> > >and death" (i.e corporeal life) that is under contestation, but his
>reading
> > >of it as merely this cycle - that it is a problem of reading (in a very
> > >broad sense) the meaning of life?
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