_GR_, 2001

[jbor]

millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> rj/rjackson/jbor/?:

Doug, unlike you I don't need to resort to personas to state my case.

> It's going to take a
> lot of revision to turn Pynchon into an advocate of War.

So, when Germany bombed London the Brits should have just rolled over and
died? Is that what the opening section of _GR_ is "teaching" us? If it is
I'll pass, but I don't think that's correct at all.

The question asked in the opening section of _GR_ is "what does an
individual or nation do when war has been declared on them"? It's an ethical
question as much as a psychological one. In certain situations, such as
pre-WWII (eg Appeasement) or Sept. 11, to sit back and do nothing was, or
would have been irresponsible. A crime of *neglect*.

I don't think Pynchon is "an advocate of War". I'm not "an advocate of War."
In the current situation, as in WWII, that choice was made *for* "us", not
*by* "us". I agree with Quail and mike j that the bombing in Afghanistan has
gone on too long now, is working against its purpose. I've thought this for
about a week. Aerial support for the ground campaign should be the priority.

> In general,
> rj/rjackson/jbor/? seems to have set him/herself a daunting
> literary-critical challenge:  how to take perhaps the most left-leaning,
> anti-War, progressive among serious American writers and re-interpret his
> work to turn him into a neo-conservative supporter of  the machinations of
> global capital, multinational corporations, and US foreign policy.

This is not my argument at all.

> This
> requires prodigious rewriting of  Pynchon's text [...]
> accompanied by
> suppression of a large number of the elements present in Pynchon's fiction.

You mean like when you quote the first sentence of _GR_ but refuse to engage
with the second one? Or when you take half a sentence from the _SL_ 'Intro'
or misconstrue a sentence from the 'Luddite' essay? I'll pass on that type
of textual reappropriation too thanks.

>> 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.
> 
> Obviously, Pynchon leads his readers to sympathize with the terrified
> victims of an aerial attack. Even the sophomores get that on a first
> reading.

If that was all my point was then I'd deserve the insult. But, of course, it
wasn't.

> GR doesn't show us the colonized peoples striking back at the metropole;

So, what are the Schwarzkommando up to???

> Does Pynchon thus invite his readers  to consider what it might feel like
> to be on the receiving end of the kind of aerial attacks that had been a
> staple of the war the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam?  Perhaps not
> explicitly, but that's certainly what went through my mind, when I
> encountered and read GR in the summer of 1973.   By the end of GR,  does
> Pynchon invite the reader to empathize, in that last delta-t,  with the
> victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to which the novel directly alludes?

Well, no, thankfully he doesn't try to do either of these things in _GR_.
Maybe the reader can empathise better with the experience of being a victim
because of the text, but the examples you give are certainly not in the
text. I think Pynchon's opening section is all the more powerful to Anglo
readers because the "victims" are like "us", the "good guys".

> for the first time, the people the
> Europe, the U.S., and their allies have been pissing on have finally struck
> back in a way that got our attention in a significant way.

Half the time you argue that America/the West is guilty because they
supported the Taliban and Osama, now you're arguing that they "have been
pissing on" these terrorists. The Taliban and Osama do not represent the
majority of Afghani people.

>> He negotiated with the Taliban to hand over
>> the chief suspect.
> 
> Bush said repeatedly he would not negotiate, he made a non-negotiable
> demand, and has continued to repeat it.

Doug, it was the Taliban who refused to negotiate. The U.S. simply asked
that Osama be turned over, which was a reasonable demand. That the Taliban
refused to accede to this request, made on several separate occasions
through various diplomatic initiatives, proved the regime's complicity. They
declared war on the U.S., after all.

Had the Taliban handed over Osama then no military action against them would
have occurred. That would have been a great pity, because the Taliban
leaders are monsters, and by putting them down the West is doing the Afghani
people a huge favour.

> that widely
> reported that Bush made his mind up on September 11 to respond with an
> attack on Afghanistan.

Now you're trying to rewrite recent history! Perhaps he quickly foresaw or
was advised that this course of action would become inevitable, but unless
you can read Bush's mind how can you possibly say this? From what I saw he
seemed to be shaken by the tragedy, and sincerely grief-stricken. The course
of action he pursued does not correlate with someone who had "made his mind
up" on September 11. I doubt he even knew where Afghanistan was.

>> he declared a just war
> 
> That's propaganda. The fact is, as many reputable observers around the
> world have noted, the war is not legal vis-a-vis the relevant  world law,
> UN procedures, etc.

Er, what? The U.S. attacked military targets, not civilian ones. That, in my
opinion, is a just war. The terrorist attacks on the U.S. were not just.
After the attacks, and with the threat of more to come, the U.S. military
strikes were justified.

>> on the regime harbouring the terrorist leaders and
>> began strategic bombing raids on their military installations and transport
>> and communications centres.
> 
> And in the process, killing an untold number of civilians -- already in the
> hundreds according to credible, mainstream news organizations.  Those
> responsible for these attacks know from the get-go that there is a margin
> of error involved in targeting these bombs and missiles,

As opposed to deliberately targetting the WTC and actively attempting to
kill 250,000 people, as one of the terrorists hoped or expected.

> they seem to
> have decided, once again, in the cruelest sort of cost-benefit analysis,
> that innocent civilians are expendable in order to achieve the larger goal.

I don't think anyone "decided" this at all. They have used the technology to
effect the utmost possible precision to prevent the loss of civilian life in
Afghanistan, as opposed to what the terrorists "decided" to do. I think
about three or four bombs have missed their targets, one perhaps due to
Taliban anti-missile fire.

> How does that differ from what the terrorists did in their attacks on the
> U.S.?

You are not serious, surely. You're trying to *defend the terrorists!!!*

> flip things around the way so many people have done

With a nuclear arsenal and military might on the terrorists' side we
wouldn't be around now, you can be quite sure of that.

best