political polarity and pynchon

[prozak at anus.com]

> Pynchon's subject matter, even in his naive voice, provokes political
> discussion. Reading something like "Under the Rose" immediately provokes
> questions about the setting and the surrounding history. Porpentine and his
> opposite numbers are political animals in the purest state.
> 
> >For he and Moldweorp, Porpentine knew, were cut from the same pattern: comrade
> Machiavellians, still playing the games of Renaissance Italian politics in a
> world that had outgrown them (p97).
> 
> Cold war comparisons anyone?
> 
> British and German maneuvering in the Middle East leads to nation-making.
> False borders cut across linguistic, religious, and ethnic lines; forming
> unnatural alliances that can only lead to civil war.
> 
> Intelligence agencies playing by old rules, become chummy though still
> murderous through professional courtesy and familiarity.

very true. it seems to me that on one side pynchon sees what stevie 
ray vaughan would call "talking about good things and singing the 
blues," meaning a celebrating of existence in all of its positive and 
strange forms, but an assertion of its relevance. on the other side, 
it seems pynchon sees The Artificial as having risen outside the 
human deliberate mindset yet as having taken it over.

it seems to me this part, like his emerson references, place him 
straight in the middle of gnostic theory. and in that, many of the 
ways we understand things now are re-framed as theological conflicts.

-- 
Backup Rider of the Apocalypse
www.anus.com/metal/
DEATH AND BLACK METAL