pynchon-l-digest V2 #2191

[barbara100 at jps.net]

I have to say, Jbor's posts really jarred me.  I meant it when I said I was
astonished.  He scares me a little bit.  Like I scare Quail I guess.  But
it's so much worse because people like Jbor really do want power.  And he's
the kind Pynchon meant when he referred to the eunuchs keeping the harem,
getting their numb and joyless hardons second hand through the
Administration and the big bombs that go booommm! You guys, Pynchon is *so*
merciless on you!  Tell me if this doesn't make you're pulse rate just a
little bit.  I think a person may not understand Pynchon, but when it really
counts, he makes sure his reader can *feel* it.  I never read a book that
made my pulse race as much as Gravity's Rainbow does--



  "It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all
theater, all just to keep the people distracted....secretly, it was being
dictated instead by  the needs of technology...by a conspiracy between human
beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy burst of war,
crying, 'Money be damned, the very life of[insert name of Nation] is at
stake,'  but meaning, most likely, *dawn is nearly here, I need my night's
blood, my funding, ah more, more*.... The real crises were crisis of
allocation and priority, not among firms--but among
the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs
which are understood only by the ruling elite...
    "Yes, but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been
iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger
Schwarzkommando especially),  'All very well to talk about having a monster
by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some
specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't *wanted* to chuck a ton of
Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians?  Go ahead,
capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less
responsible--but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the
eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are--'" (GR 607)




Pynchon's really tough. But I think he degrades us like this to get our
attention.  I think he really wants us to notice this part. He wants our
pulse to race a little when we read it, wants us to make a connection to own
place and time. I'm convinced of it.

If I plug in my place and time to this analogy, I see George Bush Jr and Sr
and Jim Baker and Unocal and Lockheed at the top of one side, and I guess
Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the mid-east oil tycoons on
the top of other.  Each side's trying hard to 'deify' themselves and their
cause as just, and both sides do it rather convincingly; they both seem
effective at wooing their harems' support and rallying up their eunuchs with
war cries.  Yes, yes, it fits as good today as it did yesterday.  We're
still the same kind of people caught up in the same fields shit.  It's a
different dick today, but it's the same numb and joyless hardon.  We're the
same suppressed and ignorant  harems, being kept or subjugated or starved or
stifled  by the same kinds of eunuchs living vicariously in their Master's
rut because they don't have the balls anymore to *think* for themselves.

It's just so painfully clear to me....



    "'Don't sweet talk me,' Christian explodes, 'you don't care about me,
you don't care about my sister, she's dying out there and you just keep
plugging her into your equation--you--play this holy-father routine, and
inside that ego you don't even hate us, you don't care, you're not even
*connected* any more--'  He swings his fist at Enzian's face.  He's crying.
    "Enzian stands there and lets him.  It hurts.  He lets it.  His meekness
isn't all politics, either.  He can feel enough of the bone truth in what
Christian said--maybe not all of it, not all at once, but enough.
    "'You just connected.  Can we go after her, now?'" (GR 612)



I'd like to say to my leaders what Christian says here to his.



---- Original Message -----
From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2001 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #2191


> rj/rjackson/jbor/?
> >Did you actually read what those leaflets which the U.S. planes dropped
were
> >saying to the Afghani people? We're on their side.
>
> I guess the people believe the bombs, not the leaflets. If we're on their
> side,  why are we killing them and pursuing a policy that will --
according
> to the UN and all relevant international aid agencies -- result in
starving
> millions of refugees to death?  With friends like that, who needs enemies?
> This is a wicked policy -- burn the village to save it, rightly condemned
> as criminal in Vietnam and everywhere else this sort of total war has been
> pursued.  Credible reports from journalists and other observers in
> Afghanistan and nearby -- as reported by a broad range of mainstream
> newspapers and news agencies around the world -- tell us that the Afghan
> people are terrified and bewildered beneath the US attack that is
> destroying their country and killing their wives, children, parents --
> people who are dying as the result of bombs and missiles and bullets
bought
> and paid for by the American people.  It's possible that some of those
> people might have died as the result of Taliban actions, but we can't know
> that for sure-- on the other hand it's an absolute certainty that the US
> attack (backed by the UK, the rest of NATO and coalition partners) has in
> fact killed these individuals and has continued the destruction begun by
> the Russians, continued by the civil war, and now completed by us.  A cry
> went up around the world in the wake of September 11, begging the US not
to
> pursue this kind of attack, given the fact that Afghanistan, one of the
> world's poorest countries, had already been devastated by more than two
> decades of war -- but Bush and his backers have persisted.  It's been a
> tragedywith, so far, no apparent military effect; the Taliban are fighting
> back and, according to a BBC report yesterday, actually on the attack
> against the so-called "Northern Alliance, while that pack of corrupt and
> cruel partisan foes of Taliban have yet to make a move; and there's
> certainly been no reduction in the terror here at home.  Watching the news
> on the Tube yesterday, it's obvious that confidence in this military
> adventure has been shaken at the highest level.  One of the most powerful
> Senators, Joe Biden, spoke one of the first truthful sentences I've heard
> recently, saying that the U.S. is beginning to look like a high-tech bully
> with this air attack.