Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

on 2/6/03 12:39 AM, Paul Nightingale at isread at btopenworld.com wrote:

> However, it is "Churchill" that qualifies ie identifies "war cabinet";
> just as "fascist" qualifies ie identifies the kind of regime juxtaposed
> to the war cabinet. Those qualifications are what make the sentence
> significant.

In your interpretation of it, perhaps. The way I see it, it's the war
cabinet rather than Churchill which is significant, linking both backwards
and forwards to Pynchon's main topic in the section, which is Orwell's
perception of the British Labour Party's rationale as an example of "phony
antifascism".

> Hence, to say that one is synonymous with the other doesn't do
> full justice to the careful way P has constructed the paragraph.

Sure it's more subtle than my cursory analysis revealed, but at least I'm
making a move towards acknowledging the subtleties rather than simply
connecting up the repetitions of the word "fascist" to try and make out that
Pynchon is calling Churchill one. Which, of course, he isn't.

> What you describe as "weak modality" above is P writing in the present
> tense for the first time in the Foreword.

Sorry, "could" isn't present tense. The word "can" is. In this instance
"could" is a modal verb. A weak one.

I'll address the rest of your post later on.

best