MDMD: Print the legend but don't mention Coppola!

[John Lundy]

On Tuesday, 9 October 2001 12:20, Terrance [SMTP:lycidas2 at earthlink.net] 
wrote:
>
>
> John Lundy wrote:
> >
> > Naturally I concur with your view that there's nothing in his novels 
that
> > would offer succour to the Right,
>
> Naturally. That's an easy one. Pynchon is a Lefty. That's not too hard
> to prove. Defining what sort of Lefty he is, now that's difficult. More
> importantly, it is Pynchon's critique of the Left that matters. His
> critique of the Right is candy drill cartoonish--Ray-Gun, Zhlubb, etc.,
> but his critique of the Left is bitter and sour grapes. He's
> particularly rough on the bookish Lefty intellectuals, be they college
> professors or philosophers, and he returns again and again to their
> betrayal and to their self-serving supercilious defense of the true
> preterit working class.


I agree Terrance, there's no doubt that TP doesn't spare the Left either. 
 Is it Titcherine who says something like (I'm too lazy to look it up) "If 
the state is inevitably going to whither away, why die for the Revolution?" 
 It's one of the reasons why I admire the man so much.  But my point was 
that for some members of this august list it isn't such an "easy one". 
 There seems to be an inability to see this point and that hysterical 
advocacy of jack-booted thuggery doesn't really square with what Pynchon is 
saying, if, of course, we can be so bold as to put forward the view that he 
is saying anything at all.

That's all, my friend.  Nothing more profound than that.