My one true Marxist state

[Doug Millison]

What's really funny this time around is that jbor and I have kept the
discussion pretty clean; despite getting a tad testy now and again, we both
backed away from name-calling and focused, more or less, on M&D. (Having
made his interpretation look so silly, I don't mind being magnanimous and
overlooking the flamebait he offered at those moments when he ran out of
ideas).  Can't say the same for Mackin, Malign, and Terrance, who have all
piped in at intervals, and who have stepped in big-time with insults and
diversions since jbor stopped applying bubble gum and bailing wire to his
Rube Goldberg interpretation of Washington and Gershom.  But that's all
they've done hereabouts for a long time now, and I doubt they'll change.

jbor can discuss Pynchon if he wants to, but he doesn't have a very good
track record of sticking with an argument when others find its weak spots.
DudiousMax demonstrated that, I have a couple of times now, as have several
other P-listers.  When jbor can't get agreement, first he starts repeating
his brain-dead arguments,  and when all else fails in comes his posse.  All
very predictable.  But, then, the task he's set himself -- to rewrite
Pynchon as the sort of American writer who can treat Reagan-Bush-Bush and
their twisted version of America  with "respect" (which is where this whole
thread started, if you'll recall, see below) -- is impossble from the
get-go, and I do admire his energy.

At 6:35 PM -0700 7/15/02, Dave Monroe wrote:
[...]
>But Doug is hardly the only one flinging said shit
>around here.  Some might perfume it up a bit, but ...




http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67421&sort=date
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 17:17:13 -0700
jbor:
>As far as Pynchon goes, it's pretty clear to me that the doesn't buy into
>the partisan politics game in the slightest.

That may be true, although I'm at a loss to understand how might know this
with any certainty.  It's certainly true that Pynchon has made a special
effort to skewer a series of Republican Presidents -- Nixon, Reagan, Bush
-- in his fiction, quite savagely, in fact.

His consistent anti-fascist politics and outrage at the very many forms of
corporate exploitation and ruination of ecological systems -- just to name
a couple of political viewpoints he upholds throughout his oeuvre -- would
appear to cut across mainstream (US Democratic/Republican) party lines, but
certainly political parties do exist that could accomodate them.

jbor:
>Regardless of who it is, the President of the U.S. - the power and authority
>of the office, at the very least - deserves respect.

How much "respect" does Pynchon show the future Pres. Geo. Washington in
M&D?  That novel comes down pretty hard on the Founding Fathers in general
(Franklin gets the treatment, too)...and it works overtime to distinguish
class differences in Colonial America that the "revolution" (absent from
the novel) will do nothing to erase but instead serve only to exacerbate.