A sketch of Pynchonian politics

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane O' Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 7:23 AM
Subject: Re: A sketch of Pynchonian politics


>
>
> David Morris wrote:
> >
> > --- Jane O' Sweet <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > So on and on. The S&M relationship in Pynchon's fiction is a
> > > religious bond. I hate to keep saying this, but it's too
> > > important to be ignored.
> >
> > But is it important enough for you to explain what you mean?
>
>
> Benny needs a job, the Alligators want to die. He signs a
> contract with them in the holy water, the Roman Catholic
> holy baptismal waters of the sewer (in P's fiction even as
> early as V. the tri-part heaven earth Olympus is inverted so
> Benny is in sacred space, like a church if you believe in
> that,  I mean ***really believe***) to kill the Alligators,
> they will be passive, remember (mixed in with his TV Western
> heroics) when Benny kills one he calls the Alligator Baby
> and
> says something like, your not supposed to fight back or bite
> back or some such, passive white virgin and the man with a
> gun, S&M and this bond is always in P's fiction a
> perversion, corruption, distortion, usurpation, of the
> culture/people/religion, like the christian sickness or the
> corruption of the Herero religion or the song that Tech
> writes down or W. Slothrop's Judas heresy infected by
> Newtonian winds, but the important point is, that what binds
> master and slave, destroyed and destroyer, Herero and von
> Trotha, Weissmann and Pokler, Slothropn and Malcolm, so
> on...is a religious bond deep in the very Spirit of Man,
> deep in the Modern mind, deep in the SOUL, the Rocket, the
> Dynamo is the soul of the church, the state, the empire, of
> Modern MAN, and when ever two are gathered in its name in
> Pynchon's fiction, there will be S and M. We define
> each other. No Brock w/o Frenesi. No Weissmann w/o Slothrop.
> No Sarah w/o Fopple.
>
I thought my sentences were long and complex!!  Have you stopped puffing
yet?  :-)