Oh, no! War talk on Pynchon-L?

[Doug Millison]

Good point.  I wrote:  "corporations that profit or otherwise benefit from
war" which is something less than "all corporations."

One of those coffeehouses, by the way (as you probably know), was Lloyd's,
which turned into the insurance giant.  Depending on what you think of
insurance companies, that could be a good thing,  I guess.

In M&D, coffee is a commodity to be exploited by budding capitalists in the
economic system that colonies and colonization made possible.  Again,
depending on what you think of capitalism, that could be a good thing.  Not
very good for the exploited natives of the colonies, in my opinion at
least.

I have had coffee at Starbucks, not often but in a pinch (no alternative),
since the corporation  announced support for Fair Trade Coffee a while
back.  ;)

-Doug


At 7:48 PM -0500 11/30/01, Scott Badger wrote:
>All corporations?  Including the coffee houses that provided assembly, as
>well as ample -- and competitively priced, I'm sure -- java, to the
>revolting Americans in M&D?  Or, only if there had been a Starbuck's then?
>
>Scott


>Doug:
>> I don't think what Pynchon does is "make it easier to swallow the
>> bullshit."  I agree that he presents a dark picture, that he does an
>> amazing job of approximating in his fiction the mind-boggling and
>> sometimes
>> disheartening complexities of being alive in this world, but a few things
>> remain constant in his work -- the ability of love to transcend
>> the bs even
>> if only for fleeting moments, the redemptive power of community and family
>> (this becomes especially evident in Vineland and even more so in Mason &
>> Dixon), his sympathy for the victims of war, his savage critique of
>> politicians and corporations that profit or otherwise benefit
>> from war, and
>> the presentation of a cosmology in which existence continues beyond the
>> life/death interface.  I don't agree with those who argue that P undercuts
>> these affirmations, they persist throughout his fiction, and seem to be
>> growing more affirmative as he gets older.



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com