Pynchon and the current situation

[Terrance]

Paul Nightingale wrote:
> 
> Perhaps the key point about war and economy concerns the way the capitalist
> economy has changed since the 1950s. That is to say, the increased
> importance of credit borrowing; the consumer economy, in the US and Western
> Europe, as well as other parts of the world, requires not personal wealth or
> a high level of income, but that little plastic rectangular answer to all
> your problems. In fact, the gap between the richest 5% or 10% and the bottom
> 5% or 10% continues to increase, within and between nation-states. Credit
> borrowing is a major player now as it wasn't before - cuts in interest
> rates, anyone? In the last 12 months, the US and British democratic (now,
> don't laugh) systems elected those who, with barely a quarter of the vote,
> were simply less unpopular than their rivals. This is hardly surprising,
> given that the principle function of such elected leaders is to manage
> capitalism. Hence the need to control the behaviour (and even thoughts - I'm
> not saying this is successful, but it is attempted) of the mass of the
> population. The definition of an enemy against which to define ourselves
> needs no elaboration. Reagan's magnificent achievement in the 1980s had
> three main elements: (i) the renewed arms race compromised the US' European
> allies, (ii) the increased importance attached to terrorism, which quickly
> had to become (eg. Qaddafi in the mid-80s) state terrorism (after all, the
> world's greatest democracy couldn't be pushed around by a handful of lone
> gunmen - and yes, the phrasing is intentional), and (iii) the weakening of
> any remaining connection between government spending on so-called defence
> (which, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with state terrorism itself,
> this is still the world's greatest democracy) and the interests of the mixed
> economy. Capitalism is a beast with many heads.


I think VL is a novel that addresses the current situation better than
GR. 
I disagree with Doug's analysis; of the current situation and of GR. 


"The Jesuits taught me to examine things for second meanings
and deeper connections...This implies they were thinking
target all along." 

                                        Delillo, Underworld



According to Pynchon  there is a drive within us to
establish systems at the expense of differentiation. He has
it, and we have it, and They have it. As a writer he wants
to expand the reader's point of view. He writes  an
encyclopedic satire elaborately designed but he subverts his
own design. There is a sustained tension in Pynchon's texts.
We might call it the "PoMo-Mo Agon." Modernist conventions
and subversive Postmodernist techniques coexist without
invalidating each other so that if the subversive PoMO
really subverts, in the end it subverts the law of
contradiction. 

One of the important elements of Menippean
Satire is Carnival. One function of the Carnival in GR is to
cast-off what is according to Pynchon, a natural disposition
of the Modern Western Mind, that "A is B and A is not B
cannot both be true. According to Pynchon, the drive to
establish systems at the expense of the other(s) or
differentiation, on the social level, and we can say, on the
aesthetic level, leads to repressive technocratic society
and an art that is only one tool of the repressive system. 

The "Counterforce and the "System" also exist in conflict
and nearly every relationship and every environment in GR
obeys an S&M pattern.  

"We define each other." 


Even the narrators play parts in the S&M drama, both with an imagined
reader (see naratee and the 2nd person Brian McHale), the
characters, each other, the author, and the reader.
Sometimes they are dominant and sometimes they play victim
to the naratee or another narrator or character, or even
their own stories. .  Some of the narrators work for Them,
are henchmen or masters in the "system" and they will quite
frequently address an imagined reader, mislead him (I think
he is male?) or tell him lies or tell tall tales, or tell
ridiculous paranoid parodies, or give bad advise, or insult,
or mock the reader's "bookish" reflexes and natural
proclivity for patterns and systems and, well,  "cause and
effect." Diversity is often reduced to a Binary. 

"Ideas of the opposite"
pleasure from pain, light from dark,
dominance from submission
life from death and guilt from
innocence
GR.48

We also have, in addition to the "YOU" that is addressed in
GR, the "WE" that is addresses, and this "We-Address" often
makes the naratee and the narrators accomplices or
supporters of the Masters or Henchmen or System or a
defender of  character that has been a victim at some point
but is now a victimizer.

 THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION

 What is the Law of Contradiction?

 Law of Contradiction and Law of Knowledge

           "Now the best established of all principles
             may be stated as follows: The same attribute
             cannot at the same time belong and not
             belong to the same subject in the same
             respect ... This I repeat, is the most certain
             of all principles..." 

             "There is a principle in existing things about
             which we cannot make a mistake; of which,
             on the contrary, we must always realize the
             truth -- that the same thing cannot at one and
             the same time be and not be, nor admit of
             any other similar pair of opposites..."
             
             "The most certain principle of all is that
             regarding which it is impossible to be
             mistaken; for such a principle must be both
             the best known ... and non-hypothetical. For
             a principle which every one must have who
             understands anything that is, is not a
             hypothesis; and that which every one must
             know who knows anything ... Evidently then
             such a principle is the most certain of all ...
             It is, that the same attribute cannot at the
             same time belong and not belong to the
             same subject and in the same respect."
             

          Aristotle said,  further, that "everyone
         in argument relies upon this ultimate law, on which
         all others rest." He said this principle or law of
         logic "must be known if one is to know anything at all."
         He also said, "if everything is and at the same
         time  is not, all opinions must be true."


I wonder what Aristotle would make of The Brothers Karamozov

RATIONALIZATION OR ROUTINIZATION AND THE CHARISMATIC HERO

The world of modernity, Weber stressed over and over again,
has been deserted by the gods. Man has chased them away and has
rationalized and
made calculable and predictable what in an earlier age had seemed
governed by
chance, but also by feeling, passion, and commitment, by personal appeal
and
personal fealty, by grace and by the ethics of charismatic heroes.

Weber attempted to document this development in a variety of
institutional areas. His studies in the sociology of religion were meant
to trace
the complicated and tortuous ways in which the gradual "rationalization
of
religious life" had led to the displacement of magical procedure by the
rational
systematization of man's relation to the divine. He attempted to show
how prophets
with their charismatic appeals had undermined priestly powers based on
tradition;
how with the emergence of "book religion" the final systematization and
rationalization of the religious sphere had set in, which found its
culmination in the Protestant
Ethic.
 

The Economic They of GR: The Kartell, The Firm, The Syndicate, The 
Management, 


The Political They GR:  Empire, CorporateSstate, Ruling Elite or the
degenerate aristocracy. 

Allusions and Personifications of THEY: The Elect, The Studio, the
Octopus, Adenoid, Dracula. 

THEY

Soldiers stand every few yards, a loose cardon, unmoving, a
bit supernatural. The Battle of Britain was hardly so
formal. But these new robot bombs bring with them chances
for public terror no one has sounded. Jessica notes a
coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited
civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.
      
 "Who're they?"
      
 He shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot."
[GR.40]

Does GR pin down or name an unequivocal source for the evil it portrays? 

Who are THEY? 

"From overhead, from a German camera-angle, it occurs to
Webley Silvernail, this lab here is also a maze, Isn't it
now
behaviorists run these aisles of tables and consoles
just like rats 'n' mice
.But who watches from above, who
notes their responses?" 

This terrible description, dark and grim,  is subverted by a
silly song-PAVLOVIA. [GR.229]


THEY are universal conspiracy. THEY appear under
every imaginable manifestation of power. Ultimately, all of
these are subordinated to the "the needs of technology
 a
conspiracy between human beings and techniques
these needs
are understood only by the Political They or the "ruling
elite." 


THE ECONOMIC: The Kartel, The Syndicate, The Firm, The  Management

In economic terms, They are "the growing organic Kartel",
the "IG" that Smarargd says is "ours" but which Herr
Rathenau, from the expanded, though not perfect view from
the "other side" says is "only another illusion." 

Rathenau seems to know more about who They are, but he can't
tell. He can only tell what the questions are: "You must ask
two questions. First, what is the real nature of synthesis?
And then: what is the real nature of control?" [GR.166-167]

Pointsman, the profane Pavlovian Knight, knows that the
"agents of the Syndicate
 wait in the central chamber" of
the labyrinth, that "its only a job they have
." And to fund
his project and keep Mexico, he will do a job on Pudding and
R&J.  

Funding the War and the Laboratory is expensive. Men and
women can be very valuable assets to The Firm When the
Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit argues that the MMPI only
"tests for whether a man will be a good or bad soldier," and
not any "human values," Pointsman, a Utilitarian, replies, 
"Soldiers are much in demand these days, Reverened Doctor."
[GR.81]

Of course, The Firm is particularly interested in any
soldiers that possess special talents or "gifts."

 Brian McHale says the opening dream scene of GR is a "paradigm of
problematic passages throughout Gravity's Rainbow: the
reader, invited to reconstruct a 'real' scene or action in
the novel's fictive world, is forced in retrospect -
sometimes in long retrospect - to 'cancel' the
reconstruction he or she has made, and to relocate it within
a character's dream, hallucination, or fantasy." And, more
important to our current concerns, Pirate's gift for
"getting inside the fantasies of others
is a gift the Firm
has finds uncommonly useful."  

The Firm's or Their control over the narrative is another subject, but
we can
see that They control the funding with the War, and that
although Pirate saves Europe from the Balkan Armageddon, the
Firm only allows him "tiny homeopathic doses of peace" and
he does not save Europe from World War II. 

The Firm uses men or women to get what They want. Roger Mexico 
knows that the War is his mother and that the business of the War "is
buying and selling."

IG

Pynchon's representation of IG adheres to the historical
view that combined power was based on the bypassing of
national politics and the stimulation of military activity. 

Spencer provides a brief historical account of how IG and
its affiliates bypassed political boundaries and alliances
to establish a transnational power structure that included
Standard Oil and ICI etc. 

And he says, 

"However, Pynchon especially emphasizes the
post-war reconfiguration of these elements...where
technological domination, as mobilized by the increasingly
autonomous multinationals and supra-military, has broken the
efficacy of national politics even in peacetime." 

The clearest example of this is not Germany or even Europe,
but Japan. Remember, that immediately after the war the
"allies" are now out of the theatre and into the theater.
The U.S. quickly abandons its policy of anti-monopoly break
ups, the breaking up of large companies and cartels was not
followed through in Japan or in Europe.   Cold War, "Self
Defense Forces" "The Dodge Plan", etc., the prime mover was
more concerned with greater production by existing companies
and structures. Rather than ensuring a competitive market by
breaking up big companies, the goal was to strengthen
productive capacity quickly. The goal was met, the Cold War
was set, the oil would flow, the hot conflicts, Korea, SE
Asia would depend upon the strengthened structures of
manufacturing, technology,  US/UN bases, and oil in the
Theater. 



"Practical men are usually the slaves of some defunct
economist." --John Maynard Keynes

"Knowledge is the only investment which never has diminishing return." 
		--Jane Sweet