Sea Voyages & Insanity

[Doug Millison]

I wonder what Pynchon might make of this morning's
scene at the NYSE, the singing of "God Bless America"
as a NY police office and fire fighter pushed the bell
to open the market. The stock market = America?  In
the  Puritan ethic that runs through Pynchon's work,
perhaps that equation does reflect reality. Are the
police and fire fighters and other people involved in
the rescue effort are digging and putting their lives
on the line to make the world safe for corporate
earnings and share prices? Or might they be viewed as
among Pynchon's Preterite, the people whose good
intentions and sacrifice are hijacked to serve the
needs of Capital -- motivated in part by the sort of
religious sentiment that now wraps itself in the U.S.
flag.

A local SF Chronicle columnist encouraged us all this
morning to buy stocks in companies that sell
electronic surveillance equipment, as U.S. residents
-- the pollsters and politicians now claim -- express
their willingness to sacrifice civil liberties to help
the government launch another witch hunt like the one
that Pynchon criticizes in Vineland.  A terrorist
under every bed seems to be the tenor of quite a bit
of commentary out there-- terrorist cells are active
in California, one of our Senators said.  Terrorists
may be living in the house next door -- if U.S.
leaders follow the logic of their promise to root out
and eliminate this evil, we'll be at war with just
about everybody, everywhere, if in fact terrorists are
everywhere. 

I think it may have been GE that announced earnings
last Friday and attributed a 4 cent/share loss to the
911 attacks, and CNBC has been full of market
observers and corporate executives calculating the
cost in dollars of the tragedy, as are insurance
companies (Pynchon mentions actuaries at least a
couple of times in his novels; that's Takeshi's job in
Vineland, if I remember correctly -- trying to fix the
odds on tragedy so his company can profit no matter
what).

War means work for all, They say.

Terrance:
> It's not quite a critique of Capitalism, but of
> something,
> as Weber taught Pynchon, 
> Spiritual.


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