political polarity and pynchon

[vze422fs at verizon.net]

on 2/16/03 11:50 PM, prozak at anus.com at prozak at anus.com wrote:

> 
>> 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.

Seems like the European crusaders of the nineteenth century discounted Islam
as a potential motivating nationalist force. Popular Islam is treated as
something quaintly exotic. The cultish Sufi dervishes, contemplative
mystical poets who used the trance of automatic behavior to seek a higher
state of consciousness, were associated with the Sudanese and therefore
dangerous berserkers.

Eurocentric assumptions of elite control of politics, capital, and power?
Oligarchy? Monarchism!?

Neither the Germans nor Porpentine seem the least bit concerned about the
interests or influence of the local governments of the countries they are
skulldugging over. Or the ultimate effects of their efforts upon the lives
of the ordinary people who serve them coffee.

Goodfellow is a complete idiot who doesn't even bother to learn the language
of the region to which he is assigned, and he's sent there anyway. He shouts
in bad Arabic in French cafes. He seems primarily concerned with his own
wilting dick. This man apparently has a future in British intelligence.

Is Pynchon mocking the James Bond mythology of cold war era Intelligence?

Or is the naive Pynchon voice really naive?

He doesn't seem to give a shit about the locals either (though he has more
fun with them in V).

What's going on here? Has he just constructed a believable setting based
upon old travel guides? A feat of great science fiction or fantasy?

Did TRP even know what the hell he was doing here?

He's still coming across like a college kid in love with his own ability to
go to the library.

Is Eddie Bettano going to beat me with stolen car parts for this post?

I don't know. Just tossing stuff out.