1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[jbor]

on 2/5/03 5:44 PM, Otto wrote:

> Is it really absurd? "the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human
> addiction to power" are both important topics of the novel and Pynchon seems
> to say that Orwell must have observed something similar in British post-war
> politics as in the war cabinet.

I just think that there are many many more differences than there are
similarities between Attlee's post-war govt and Hitler's or Stalin's
regimes, and that to fail to acknowledge this is poor history. And I think
that trying to distort _1984_ into a critique of the British Labour party of
the time is far-fetched. So, I guess I'm disagreeing with Pynchon on these
two points: no huge drama.

Both "corruption of spirit" and "irresistible human addiction to power" are
pretty nebulous categories, though they are certainly major themes in _1984_
as you say, but there's also the same question of degree, and of how these
things translated in real terms for the subject populations under the Nazis
or Stalin, as compared to Britain in 1945-8. I wonder if what Pynchon is
identifying is something which is common to all systems of government, and
so picking out those three examples only and labelling them as "fascist" is
somewhat specious. Is Pynchon anti-government? And, if so, what's the
alternative he proposes?
 
>> But, as often in his fiction also, the bulk of Pynchon's political swipes
> in
>> the Foreword seem directed at the political Left which, as always, is
>> proving a little tough for some here to acknowledge and accept.
>> 
> 
> In critisizing the Left of having fallen to Doublethink too (accepting the
> Gulag as 'socialist' while rejecting the Kz as fascist) this is of course
> directed at the political Left but it's not at all embracing the political
> Right. Neither in Orwell nor in Pynchon.

I agree. My point is that, leaving aside Nazism, Fascism and Stalinism for a
moment, what is often overlooked or evaded is that political critique in
Pynchon's fiction and non-fiction (as in Orwell's) isn't restricted to
Republican and Conservative governments: Truman, JFK and LBJ cop serves in
P's work as much as, if not more so than, Reagan and the Bushes do.
Likewise, Leftist political organisations, such as PR3 and 24fps in
_Vineland_, and anti-Establishment cabals like the Tristero and the
Counterforce, are satirised quite scathingly.

> But a Pynchon uncritical of the
> Left too when it comes to politics wouldn't be a Pynchon.
> 
> What strikes me is how "1984" blurs those political categories into a single
> one: totalitarian. There's no capitalism, socialism or fascism in the novel.
> Goldstein's book describes all systems as essentially the same. This can be
> compared to "GR" where the "They"-system is operating on both sides too and
> in all parties involved.

Reading _1984_ again this week I'm struck by just how influential it has
been on Pynchon, on _GR_ in particular. Pynchon's "They" and Orwell's "the
Party" are pretty much one and the same, an entity or category which is both
self-perpetuating and beyond individual humans, but which everyone is
implicated in or complicit with in some way. There are lots of small details
as well, such as when Winston starts to believe that O'Brien's "mind
*contained*" his own, which reminds me of the confrontation between Roger
and Geza Roszavolgyi in Pointsman's office (633-4), and the scenes where
Winston is interrogated and starts to comprehend and succumb to
"doublethink" contain details and imagery which are reminiscent of
Tchitcherine's haunting (703-6), and the experiments on Slothrop at St
Veronica's as well. And, of course, there's the "slow learner" label Pynchon
takes from _1984_ for the title of his own collection of stories. It's a
conscious tribute to Orwell's novel, even though the stories themselves bear
little relation to it.

best