1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Paul Nightingale]

> So he is saying, that during war, what looks like totalitarianism is
> necessary, but should not be used to justify totalitarianism in times
of
> peace?

I don't think P is saying that, and I don't think my reading of the
passage suggests it. I don't think P deals in messages of that kind.

I think he is discussing the way in which attitudes change, are shaped
by circumstances, can be manipulated by, eg, the government. In the
first part of the passage he draws you in with an argument that the
reader might be tempted to accept, even while they know he has prefaced
the argument by attributing it to those of a fascistic disposition. He
then whacks you over the head with a different style of writing in the
second part of the paragraph and a statement (about Churchill's cabinet)
that has 'contentious' written all over it.

It's interesting (really it is) that many p-listers condemn P for bad
writing, for the banality of his ideas etc, yet seem to want nothing (or
very little anyway) from his writing here. Hostility is engendered
because he doesn't write a conventional introduction to the novel. A
conventional introduction (my working definition) might be easily
plundered by the casual reader (who has probably bought the novel to
read, well, the novel) and reduced to a few key points that ignore the
way in which he, Pynchon, has composed it. The kind of reading we apply
to the novel should also be applied to this foreword. We should
celebrate ambiguity instead of dismissing it as 'bad writing' just
because the message doesn't sit there like a beached whale after the
tide has gone out. Unfortunately too many people want to read it like
one of Terrance's biology textbooks.