Pynchon's "knewspeak"

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 09:55, Otto wrote:
> Is it the most important thing Brownlie has got to say about "Cold War
> Politics in The Crying of Lot 49" that he doesn't buy Hollander's
> argumentation? I don't buy it either. His conclusion is very far stretched.
> Charles quotes from the Random House publication to introduce a possible
> conspiracy here:
> 
> "(...) the Random House editors wrote: "Two days after the publication of
> Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Fariña was killed in a
> motorcycle accident near Carmel, California." "Was killed," implying
> agency -not "died as a result of injuries"- nourishes the germ of
> intelligent, not paranoid, suspicion. In Gravity's Rainbow, dedicated to
> Fariña, Pynchon writes: "Prophets traditionally don't last long -they are
> either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them
> stop and think, and most often they do pull back." Pynchon seems to be
> referring to both Fariña and Dylan, believing, fearing, suspecting (which is
> it?) that Fariña was "killed outright," and Dylan "given an accident."
> http://www.vheissu.be/english.htm

to read "killed in a motorcycle accident" as implying human agency? Even
the remote possibility of such? Defies sense. A burlesque of conspiracy
theorizing, might it be? 

P.

P.