GR & the SL 'Intro': relevance to 2001

[Jasper Fidget]

>"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)

This has always been one of my favorite images from GR, and possibly the one
line that turned me into a Pynchon fan.  There's a paradox in it, too, for
while the fantasizing Pirate is about to be thoroughly killed, he's also
captured--for an instant--the agent of his death, there on his head, its
tremendous destructive force momentarily neutralized (which for some reason
always makes me associate Zappa's line: "And here comes the ice-pick in the
forehead!").  But I guess Pirate feels as if he's got the whole war on the
other side of his blocking hands (and special head), terribly threatened,
sometimes even feeling doomed, but up for the challenge no less, aye, and
even ready to cook breakfast.  Remember the second "screaming" line:
"Screaming holds across the sky."  The threat is static, ongoing, and will
remain so until neutralized someplace outside of fantasies.

Jasper Fidget,
skinning a few folks.

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 8:15 AM
Subject: GR & the SL 'Intro': relevance to 2001


>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>