Slothrop, Where Are You?

[Terrance]

prozak at anus.com wrote:
> 
> > I actually live like this already ...
> 
> There's some sense to it. "Criminally insane" or not, there's
> something creepy/very wrong about the way this world is going.

No SENSE To IT!

I wonder about this. Does Pynchon actually believe that the criminally
insane have been in power. If THEY are criminally insane, no rational
explanation can justify their use of power. There can be no moral
explanation or justification.  If he does believe this,  I suspect we
will find out in that 1984 Forward (if it is not a hoax). Why? Well,
because in 1984, there is no sense to it. No rational. No reason. None.
1984 is  a strange and I think unique dystopia for exactly this reason.
In fact, this is one of the reason why the novel is not very good and
why so many can remember the manifestations, the particulars, of power
but not the reason for power and control. There is no moral
justification for the exercise of power. None. 

So, while slow learners lash out at Bush, calling him criminally insane
while they step willingly to the S&M dance, others debate, argue,
consider the reasons, the policies, the alternatives, to the Bush
policies and arguments. 

It is not the business of novelists to make policy with their fictions. 
Their politics can only weaken their fictions. But great novelists have
done it. Great prose fictions, great dramas, poems, can carry  heavy
political burdens. If these survive and become truly great works
(Richard II, Paradise Lost, Guliver's Travels, A Dialogue of Self and
Soul, The Brothers Karamazov) it is because they are so strong that they
can carry heavy political burdens. GR, I suspect, will carry on. I'm not
sure 1984, as apt it may seem, will be standing in another 30 years.