Pynchon and the current situation
Terrance
lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Sat Sep 22 00:29:57 CDT 2001
Otto wrote:
>
> Terrance:
> 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.
>
> I don't see that the following is limited in meaning to one or a special
> war:
>
> "Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The
> murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to
> non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways.
> It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It
> provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be
> taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more
> prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just
> ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while
> they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
> markets." (GR 105)
Read the entire passage and think about it. It's WWII, not Vietnam, not
the Gulf War, not whatever we are headed into now.
"Don't forget the real business of **THE** War..."
THE WAR. Not war, any war, a war on terrorism, a war on drugs, but THE
War.
It's a character in the theatre of THE war.
Of course one could, for example, read "All Quite On The Western Front"
and apply it's lessons or themes or ideas to the Vietnam War. And this
is exactly what happened here in schools all around America in the
1960s. On can read Shakespeare's Henry and Richard Plays and apply them
to the Kennedy, Nixon, Ford Presidencies. So on and on. And there are
lessons in GR that can be applied to the current state of affairs, but
how one goes about applying GR to the current situation is open to
criticism. My criticism of Doug's post stands.
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