1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Terrance:

> Cause I don't doubt that Pynchon would condemn the patriot
> act and all that fascist crap that came after 9-11, but I just don't
see
> where he does it.

Just as Orwell wrote of his own society, and couldn't help but give
expression to contemporary concerns, then so does Pynchon, directly or
indirectly. Given that he's discussing precisely the kind of situation
that has come about in the US after 9/11 it's reasonable to infer that
he expects the reader to make connections. The passage we have discussed
features the word "homeland" which has resonance. He writes of "altering
the landscape" which aptly describes the iconic transformation of what
used to be the WTC to ground zero. These points have already been made
by others; it never occurred to me, naïve to the last, that such a
reading would prove controversial.

However, there is more to it than that. Given Orwell's own interest in
language, "homeland" is an interesting choice (a) for the peddler of
political rhetoric and (b) Pynchon himself in this particular passage.
The linking of "home" and its connotations of the personal, the
neighbourhood, and "land", which I would argue is a more generalising
term, invoking the abstraction known as the 'imagined community' - this
hybrid term might make us think of the way in which we inhabit a
locality and also something less immediate, the construct known as the
nation state. Hence the landscape that is altered is also internal, to
do with the individual's consciousness of who they are, where they
belong. After all, calls to patriotism are often what chess-players call
'a forcing move'.