GR & the SL 'Intro': relevance to 2001

[jbor]

The opening section of _GR_ is much more than a simplistic "War is Bad"
screed. Perhaps not even.

    A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is
    nothing to compare it to now.

The paradox in the second sentence is crucial. Instead of choosing to begin
his WWII narrative from the point of view of the Allies as the aggressors,
the victors -- as those who are doing the bombing -- we are abruptly and
overtly forced to come to grips with the point of view of people like "us"
who are being bombed, who are in dire and imminent peril of indiscriminate
destruction from the sky, who are *victims*. It is no accident that
virtually straight after this scene we are told that Pirate is given to
worrying about the precise moment of the bomb's impact, "for a split second
you'd have to feel the very point, with the terrible mass above, strike the
top of the skull. . . . " (p.7), and that Slothrop's obsession is about a
V-2 with his name written on it. (p. 25)

The shoe here is very much on the other foot, the "wrong" foot, as it was
for the U.S. on September 11 and has been ever since. Even though there have
been bombs before, and mass destruction and death, it is always somewhere
else, someone else. From the point of view of the victim -- always -- "there
is nothing to compare it to now." No matter what came later, what will come,
on that day, and in the weeks since, civilians in the U.S., like those in
Britain under siege from the V-2s in WWII in _GR_, are *victims*.

At the opening of _GR_ it is an "Evacuation" of London (Pirate's dream
vision, mingled with the "screaming" of the V-2 containing Katje's SOS
message, his "Incoming mail"), and the fear, the destruction, which is
depicted. It is explicitly the experience of innocent Londoners during the
V-2 raids of 1944-5 in which the reader's imagination and empathy become
immersed. 

    [...] Slothrop [...] praying, at first, conventionally, to God,
    first time since the other Blitz, for life to win out. But too many
    were dying [...]  (p. 24)

The question posed by these London sequences is: how should an individual
react when he or she is being bombed? More than that, Pynchon recreates the
ethical dilemma: how does a nation react? And, his scathing satire of the
bungling, foolish British Foreign Office minions and their "responses" --
Pudding, Achtung, Pisces, the White Visitation, Pointsman et al. -- depicts
indecision and inaction as a thoroughly inappropriate course.

(One of the failings of the novel imo is that this ethical angle isn't
really sustained, the air and ground campaigns on the European Fronts are
virtually unmentioned in the text. There's the unspeakable horror of MB DRO
ROSHI, of course, but that's another one of those cusp moments Jasper
mentioned, and a different "Theatre" of war altogether. In terms of the
retaliations against German cities perhaps Pynchon thought that Vonnegut had
said all that needed to be said in _Slaughterhouse 5_. At least, that's a
book which I see as a worthwhile companion to _GR_, and a very probable
influence.)

And, as to that other half-quoted sentence from the 1984 _SL_ 'Intro':

    Except for the succession of criminally insane who have enjoyed power
    since 1945, including the power to do something about it, most of the
    rest of us poor sheep have always been stuck with simple, standard fear.
                                                            (18-19)

You can't ignore that central clause, no matter how hard you might try.
Since 1984 "our common nightmare, the Bomb", has become less of a threat,
largely due to the fact that *global* agreements have seen a reduction in
weapons of mass destruction and nuclear armouries, the fact that those who
have had "the power to do something about it" *have* done something about
it. 

Same deal now. Bush could've nuked the crap out of Afghanistan.
Indiscriminately. And Iraq. And Pakistan and Indonesia and anywhere else
that dared say "boo". He didn't. He waited for the evidence to emerge. He
sought international consensus. He negotiated with the Taliban to hand over
the chief suspect. And then, when all other alternatives had been exhausted,
he declared a just war on the regime harbouring the terrorist leaders and
began strategic bombing raids on their military installations and transport
and communications centres. Anything less would have been suicide.

Bush, more than any other world leader at this time, is the one who has the
"power to do something about it," about that Bomb which has been poised to
drop on the U.S., and the rest of the world, since war was declared
*against* the U.S. on September 11. And what he has done has been
reasonable, and just. Whatever the outcome now, it's pretty obvious that
Pynchon, being a rational and reasonable man himself, would be amongst the
90% of Westerners who acknowledge the necessity and propriety of the
U.S.-led actions to stop terrorists with bombs.

I've got a little thought exercise, one to do with democratic process, and
justice, and common sense: If there were a Presidential election in the U.S.
tomorrow, Bush versus anyone you care to put up against him, Clinton,
Chomsky, Susan Sontag, what would the result be?

best

ps to Barbara. I sleep with a clear conscience, though I realised as you
must have also that I'd never be able to match the hysterical pitch and
thoroughgoing idiocy of *your* rants. But don't feel too bad that you have
no answers, and that you are unable to sustain a reasonable discussion here.
It's no big deal, nor any surprise.