A sketch of Pynchonian politics

Phil Wise philwise at paradise.net.nz
Tue May 8 02:12:34 CDT 2001


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane O' Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: A sketch of Pynchonian politics


>
>
> Phil Wise wrote:
>
> Of Slothrop, the narrator notes,  "so well have They busted
> the sod praries of his brain, tilled and sown there, and
> subsidised him not to grow anything of his own...", while
> all of us, "as long as we can see them, stare at them, those
> massively moneyed, once in a while. As long as they allow us
> a glimpse, however rarely. We need that. And how they know
> it - how often, under what conditions...".   The narrator,
> then, does not just restrict his observations to the
> characters, but brings in the world outside the text,
> suggesting that his readers are similarly susceptable.
>
> 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
>
> hmmmmmmmmmmm, this is a big looking glass & a very big hole,
> Alice.  I doubt I'm going to follow the rabbit.

Follow what you like: Pynchon strategically deploys the word "us" at various
points in the text while his narrator talks directly to the reader.  The
reason the Rocket transcends time and space at the novel's end is so that
Pynchon can include, by implication, the "us" that existed under Nixon
(Richard M Zhlubb) in America - the present outside the text at the time of
the novel's publication.  Their nuclear bomb could have hit America at any
time...
>
> >
> > That there is no escape from Their System is made difinitively clear at
the end of the book as "all of us" sit in the Orpheus Theatre awaiting,
completely oblivious, the Rocket that will destroy us.
>
> No one has ever left the Firm and no one ever will.
>
>
> "They" are responsible for the plummeting rocket. It is
> Weissmann's project; he now numbers among "the successful
> academics, the Presidential advisers, the token
> intellectuals who sit on boards of directors" (749). Pynchon
> comments that, in searching for his fate, we should "[l]ook
> high, not low" (749), high, where They are.
>
> AND where are THEY? We have to get some of that burping soda
> that charlie and his grandfather drink in WillY Wonker
> Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, float up the through the
> rabbit's hole and step through the looking glass. And who
> are THEY on the "other side"? IBM? Bush and the Nazis?  and
> oh no I think I'll stay with humpty dumpty and all the
> king's horses and all the king's men and even with a little
> yellow yoke on my face, compliments of Mr. Pynchon's mean
> ass narrators I'll feel better inside the text. Or as the
> ground hog in Whinny the Pooh tells Christopher Robin, "I'm
> not in the book you knooooooooooooooooooow!" As he steps
> into a hole.
>
> Otherwise, where are THEY? They are the gods of course, so
> look up.
>
Lol!  Figuratively?  Or literally?  Why should one have primacy over the
other?  What are Gods but mythical figures of absolute power?  Who is to
decide between spirit and material condition?




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