Pynchon and fascism

[jbor]

on 2/6/03 8:01 AM, jbor wrote:

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

on 2/6/03 12:39 AM, Paul Nightingale at isread at btopenworld.com wrote:
> 
>> A slight quibble. Can Labour here acquiesce and participate, as P very
>> precisely puts it, in something with which it is synonymous (even if the
>> end result, to the casual viewer, remains the same)?

There is a connection between "Churchill's war cabinet", which did comprise
Labour Party Ministers, and its behaviour, and the subsequent reference to
British Labour's "wartime acquiescence to, and participation in, a
repressive, Tory-led government". Synonymy = saying the same thing in a
different words. 

>> More to the point,
>> perhaps, Labour's "acquiescence" is qualified by "wartime", which itself
>> signifies the past tense, given that P is now writing about O's postwar
>> attitude, when "the party [might] confront its contradictions".

It carries on from the references in the previous paragraph: "prewar
thinking ... homeland in danger ... war cabinet ... wartime necessity".
Pynchon recounts the changes in British politics and society in a
straightforward chronological way throughout this series of paragraphs.

>> Furthermore, it is Labour's election that confirms, in the text, O as a
>> "perpetual dissident", as one who is always dissenting.

It's a perpetuation of his dissidence from before the war, and from the
paragraph on the previous page: "Orwell thought of himself as a member of
the 'dissident Left' ... " It's his relationship with and attitude towards
the "'official Left'" - the British Labour Party - which is foregrounded in
the sequence of paragraphs.

>> Similarly, the "repressive ... govt" corresponds, within the narrative,
>> not to "fascist regime", but to the earlier juxtaposition of war cabinet
>> to fascist regime, which juxtaposition (including P's careful
>> qualification, "behaved no differently than" + examples) is what now
>> informs our understanding of what's said to be repressive about the
>> govt. Hence, to say that one is synonymous with the other doesn't do
>> full justice to the careful way P has constructed the paragraph.

I agree, as I noted in my previous post. However, the theme, recapitulated
several times in the sequence of paragraphs, is Orwell's attitude towards
the British Labour Party of the time. The only lexical link with "Churchill"
anywhere in the entire sequence is "Tory-led".

>>> Modality is
>>> absent
>>> from the reiteration, because it is a far less exaggerated,
>> controversial,
>>> inflammatory assertion than the one which has come before.
>>> 
>> What you describe as "weak modality" above is P writing in the present
>> tense for the first time in the Foreword. I said before that this is
>> what allows him to generalise, and the reader to speculate, about
>> people's changing attitudes at times of war etc. Hence my view
>> previously that "altering the landscape" (whether or not it refers to
>> 9/11 - fear not, I have no wish to bring that up here) might also
>> signify changing perceptions.
>> 
>> Consequently, the absence of such "weak modality" signifies P's return
>> to the past tense, to O and the situation post-45. Your detailed
>> elaboration (as "exaggerated, controversial, inflammatory") of the
>> earlier juxtaposition of one signifier to another is a value-judgement,
>> of course. 

Not at all. It's an analysis of the way modality (timeless present, future
tense, if/then constructions, modal auxiliaries) is operating in the
paragraph, offered as a starting-point for discussion.

>> The point isn't whether or not I agree with you. Rather, the
>> question to ask is why P has chosen that particular textual strategy

Indeed, which is what I have been doing. It's important to identify the
strategy accurately first.

>> when he is writing in the present tense in order to generalise, to open
>> out his frame of references from WW2, ie to address the reader ("one
>> could certainly argue" as opposed to "one might have argued" or a
>> similar formulation in the past tense) rather than report, in however
>> convoluted a fashion, where O's mind was at.

Isn't this, by your own definition, "interpretation"? I.e. 'Pynchon is
saying this, he's not saying that ... ' etc.

>> 
>>> Your "analysis" leads one to conclude - or to ask the question at
>> least -
>>> that Orwell thought of or wrote of Churchill as a fascist.
>> 
>> I think not, as what I've written above indicates. Indeed, my attempt at
>> an analysis began when I was avoiding the question that Paul Mackin had
>> put: I was explaining precisely why I didn't want to discuss such
>> questions, or to discuss the Foreword in such a way that it took us away
>> from what P wrote.

Yes, you've offered selective (and inaccurate) "analyses", both at a lexical
and structural level, avoided questions about and discussion of the
arguments you've made, and set up a false opposition between
"interpretation" (what everyone else is doing = "bad") and your own
commentaries (= "good"), all the while taking the discussion further and
further away from what is actually written in the Foreword!

>>> He didn't, and
>>> it's not what Pynchon is addressing here.
>> 
>> However, your "exaggerated, controversial, inflammatory" might lead one
>> to conclude that it is what you're addressing here.

The modality and hedging signifies a recognition on Pynchon's part that the
assertion made in the sentence ("Churchill's war cabinet ... behaved [like]
a fascist regime") might be perceived as "exaggerated, controversial,
inflammatory". The reiteration of the point in the following paragraph is
far less contentious: he refers to British Labour's "wartime acquiescence
to, and participation in, a repressive Tory-led government."

best

>>> Orwell's criticisms were
>>> directed
>>> towards the British Labour Party, which is the topic Pynchon has
>> focused
>>> on
>>> throughout the section of text. (Note that "Orwell's critique of
>> England's
>>> official Left" is placed in theme position in the second paragraph on
>> p.
>>> x.
>>> That _The Guardian_ chose to erase this paragraph entirely in its
>>> bowdlerised edit of the Foreword, and thus to obscure the lexical
>> cohesion
>>> of this section of Pynchon's text, is itself significant.)
>>> 
>> 
>> We long-suffering Grauniad readers are a strange but happy breed.
>> 
>>