Pynchon & politics

[Teufelsdröckh]

What makes the politics in Pynchon's books difficult is that while he is
clear about what is evil he shows we are all collaborators, along the
whole spectrum of willingness, awareness, connivance, ignorance, apathy,
convenience, raw deals, and coercion. We get the government we deserve,
to some extent.

In Vineland, the karmic adjustment work of Takeshi and DL is an effort
to exorcise the injustices suffered under such a system, but it does not
really challenge the system. Only when one man (Brock Vond) violates the
arrangement does everyone act against him, or rather to evade him until
his own insane program brings him crashing to earth.

In Gravity's Rainbow, the Counterforce Crew are all part of the
manipulation and deception of Slothrop. Enough of them say ¡Ya basta!
and off they go in an ultimately futile effort to save Slothrop and
redeem themselves.

One thing from the sixties that may apply is the feminist idea that "the
personal is political." Pynchon's worlds are all karmic balance:
"Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof." Or, like a grim fairy tale,
if you slay the monster, you discover what it was protecting you from. A
world of lots of little evils (socially regulated capitalism, for
example) is better than a world of an oligarchic big evil
(trans-nationals operating beyond the control of democratic governments,
for example). The political personal is that each person's own karmic
balance contributes to the system's own good-evil balance (Emerson's über-soul?).

M'aidez,
Teufelsdröckh