Brief (sadly way OT) de-lurk

[Doug Millison]

"Jane O' Sweet":
 "Doug, correct me if I'm wrong here Doug,
seeks to situate Pynchon on the extreme radical Left."

You're wrong. In this discussion, a label like "extreme radical Left"
doesn't mean much of anything. And, I'm talking about Pynchon's novels, not
Pynchon -- please note that my previous messages in this thread point to
story lines, characters, historical situations that Pynchon has depicted in
V., GR, COL49, Vineland, M&D.

If you want now to turn and look at what he's published in his non-fiction
essays, book introductions, etc., I don't think it's very difficult to
discern Pynchon's politics, or his feelings about the economic and political
system in which we live. Look at the Luddite essay for starters, where he
makes explicit the notion that the factory system -- which is certainly the
motor of the modern economy -- finds its perfection in the German death
camps, the German long-range rocket program, and in the U.S. nuclear missile
program that built on that foundation. That's hardly a compliment.

"Jane O' Sweet":
"Pynchon's sympathies for the preterite are full of ironic,
parodic, fury." 

I agree with this.