Profit & Loss

[Teufelsdröckh]

"At its essence, Tuesday [May Day in London] was not about globalisation
or capitalism but them and us, those included in society versus those
kept out, those served by politicians versus the politically
dispossessed, a smashed shop window perceived as a greater evil than a
cause left unheard."

<http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0506-06.htm>


"Somebody close by, out in the night, is playing a blues on a mouth
harp." ...

"There is no need to bring in blood or violence here. But the colonel
does have his head tilted back now in what may truly be surrender: his
throat is open to the pain-radiance of the Bulb. Paddy McGonigle is the
only other witness, and he, a one-man power system with dreams of his
own, wants the colonel out of the way as much as anyone. Eddie Pensiero,
with the blues flooding his shaking muscles, the down, mortal blues, is
holding his scissors in a way barbers aren't supposed to. The points,
shuddering in the electric cone, are aiming downward. Eddie Pensiero's
fist tightens around the steel loops his fingers have slid out of. The
colonel, with a last tilt of his head, exposes his jugular, clearly
impatient with the -- "

Gravity's Rainbow, pages 642, 655

Slothrop's trajectory is from intelligence agent specially selected to
learn about the rocket to fall away from Them to salvation among the preterite.


So I say that if we look for Pynchon's take on global capitalism,
cabals, and cartels, it is not the economic system that is at issue --
money, after all, is just a refined medium of barter -- but the eternal
struggle between the elite and the preterite, the patricians and
plebeians, the haves and have-nots, the politically connected and the
politically dispossessed. It is more complicated in Vineland than in
Gravity's Rainbow (I haven't read Mason & Dixon again since it came out,
so I can't speak with any authority about that one), but there is a
definite solidarity, an easy understanding, among the powerless, the
underground, the preterite, the debtors. Almost no danger is presented
from that side of the coin. All that is bad comes from the top.

This certainly oversimplifies Pynchon's very complex worlds, but I think
it stands generally. It actually surprises me that anyone has any doubt
where Pynchon's sympathies lie. He is not blind to the ambiguities among
both the powerful and the weak, nor does he avoid exploring their mutual
dependencies, but that does not detract from the fairly obvious reading
of which side he is on.

¡Nunca más el mundo sin nosotros! --
Diogenes Teufelsdröckh