some thoughts re Pynchon's Foreward to 1984

[pynchonoid]

After reading the Foreward in its entirety (in the
wake of a recent re-reading of _1984_), what strikes
me is how far Pynchon has gone in comparing the world
of _1984_ to that of the post-9/11 US.  It's a nuanced
comparison, but fairly straightforward. (These
comments also recall what Pynchon had to say in the
fall of 2001, in his Playboy Japan interview.)

The critique of the institutionalized Left that has
been made so much of here is not at all the main
thrust of the Foreward, imo, and well-deserved, also
imo. 

It seems clear now, after reading the Foreward,  that
Pynchon has in a sense been responding to  _1984_
throughout his writing career -- a couple of years ago
I suggested here that GR was responding to 1984;  
Vineland's debt is more obvious.  I don't know for
sure, but I suspect that his connections in the
publishing industry (through his agent) may have found
out about Plume's project to publish a centennial
version of _1984_ Pynchon may have requested the
assignment.

Regarding a thread that was popular here awhile back,
the Foreward reveals more of Pynchon's negative
attitude towards the Tube, which he sees as a form of
social control.

The ending on the picture of Orwell and his son can be
read, I think, as Pynchon's comment on being a father
himself:  

"There is a photograph, taken around 1946 in
Islington, of Orwell with his adopted son, Richard
Horatio Blair. The little boy, who would have been
around two at the time, is beaming, with unguarded
delight. Orwell is holding him gently with both hands,
smiling too, pleased, but not smugly so - it is more
complex than that, as if he has discovered something
that might be worth even more than anger - his head
tilted a bit, his eyes with a careful look that might
remind filmgoers of a Robert Duvall character with a
backstory in which he has seen more than one perhaps
would have preferred to. Winston Smith "believed that
he had been born in 1944 or 1945 . . ." Richard Blair
was born May 14, 1944. It is not difficult to guess
that Orwell, in 1984 , was imagining a future for his
son's generation, a world he was not so much wishing
upon them as warning against. He was impatient with
predictions of the inevitable, he remained confident
in the ability of ordinary people to change anything,
if they would. It is the boy's smile, in any case,
that we return to, direct and radiant, proceeding out
of an unhesitating faith that the world, at the end of
the day, is good and that human decency, like parental
love, can always be taken for granted - a faith so
honourable that we can almost imagine Orwell, and
perhaps even ourselves, for a moment anyway, swearing
to do whatever must be done to keep it from ever being
betrayed. "

Perhaps -- no way to know this for sure of course --
M&D, with its dedication to Pynchon's wife and son,
might reflect Pynchon's own discovery of "something
that might be worth even more than anger" that seems
so intense in his earlier work, especially GR. The
final sentence of the above quote shows Pynchon
hedging his bets again and underscoring any possible
sentimentality that might be read into this passage
about the photo of Blair and his son.

This is all just one reader's opinion, of course.  I
have to agree with Mutualcode -- it's clear and
straightforward.  A reader would have to work pretty
hard -- as some have done -- to make it otherwise.



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com