1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Dave Monroe]

Ah, la voix de raison ...

--- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> 
> > 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.

He's decidedly not saying that, see ...

> 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.

Not to mention a pargraph that has "9/11," "Patriot
Act," and "Bush Administration" written between its
lines, inscribed in its allusions ...

> 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.

It sure as hell is ...

> Hostility is engendered because he doesn't write a
> conventional introduction to the novel.

Actually, I thought of it as a very conventional
introduction.  People who write these things always
seem at  pains to establish the "relevance" of whatver
work their working up.  And there's bibliographic,
literary, historical, whatever context aplenty.  Not
to mention politics.  So m-maybe it's the politics?
Pynchon saying what some don't want him to say? 
Hermeneutic acrobatics abound in the readings of even
that one paragraph we've been discussing ...
 
> The kind of reading we apply to the novel should
> also be applied to this foreword.

I'd also suggest that perhaps Pynchon is suggesting
that the kind of reading he applies to 1984 also be
applied to his very own novels et al., but ...

> 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.

Me, as y'all know, I'm all for a certain indeterminism
of meaning, and consider it a hallmark of Pynchoniana.
 But there's a difference between "ambiguity" and
interpretive contortion.  And tehre's a difference
between ambiguity and the obvious.  Fully realizing
all this will be repeated "against" me, of course. 
Narcissus, meet Echo?  Francis, meet Pee-Wee? 
Whatever ...

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