"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

>> I mean, why switch tenses if he was only continuing along the some
>> old of train of thought?

I don't think the tense shift in the middle paragraph signifies a change in
Pynchon's "train of thought". He's referring to how people during WWII (and
people today - "those among us") did and do respond to Orwell's criticisms
of Churchill's coalition government.

I think it's probably reasonable to infer from this passage, and others,
what Pynchon's attitude to Bush and the Patriot Act and whatever might be,
but he isn't making an explicit reference here. The later comments about
"the present day United States" are explicit, however, but his particular
targets there are three arms of the American system of government which were
around long before 9/11.

It's interesting that the quote provided below is again a bowdlerisation of
Pynchon's text. Does the _Guardian_ edit leave out the paragraph which is at
the bottom of p. 10? If so, it's a telling omission.

best


on 9/5/03 5:48 AM, barbara100 at jps.net at barbara100 at jps.net wrote:

> I was just re-reading the Foreword in the Guardian this morning, still waiting
> for my copy to arrive in the mail. It was argued yesterday that the "fascistic
> disposition" paragraph wasn't alluding to our present-day situation because
> the paragraph before and after focuses specifically on Orwell's relationship
> with and criticisms of British governments and politicians of the time.  That
> seems a pretty reasonable observation, but if you look more closely, the first
> of these three paragraphs is written strictly in past tense--"Orwell thought
> of himself"  "he had come…to regard"  "he felt"  "he found"
> etc…
> 
> Naturally he would be writing in past tense if talking about Orwell, so it's
> really no surprise there. But the next paragraph, beginning curiously with the
> word "Now", is almost completely in present and future tense--"those among us
> who remain"  "will immediately point out" "the moment enemy bombs begin to
> fall"  "producing casualties among friends and neighbors" "no one is likely to
> be listening" etc…  The only past tense mention in that second paragraph
> is at the very end, and it's clearly attributed to Churchill's war cabinet.
> 
> Then in the next paragraph we're taken back into the past, which again is no
> surprise since he's talking about the time in which Orwell was writing--"had
> been an honourable struggle" " criminal behaviour of capitalism toward those
> whom it used for profit" "bought and sold"  etc…
> 
> I think it's reasonable to infer that "Now" means now in that middle
> paragraph.  I mean, why switch tenses if he was only continuing along the some
> old of train of thought? And even if he didn't specifically mean "now", how
> could he not think his readers would/should make the connection to now? To me
> it's pretty obvious he's talking about the present-day situation.
> 
> Foreword:
> Orwell thought of himself as a member of the "dissident left," as
> distinguished from the "official left," meaning basically the British Labour
> party, most of which he had come, well before the second world war, to regard
> as potentially, if not already, fascist. More or less consciously, he found an
> analogy between British Labour and the Communist Party under Stalin - both, he
> felt, were movements professing to fight for the working classes against
> capitalism, but in reality concerned only with establishing and perpetuating
> their own power. The masses were only there to be used for their idealism,
> their class resentments, their willingness to work cheap and to be sold out,
> again and again. 
> Now, those of fascistic disposition - or merely those among us who remain all
> too ready to justify any government action, whether right or wrong - will
> immediately point out that this is prewar thinking, and that the moment enemy
> bombs begin to fall on one's homeland, altering the landscape and producing
> casualties among friends and neighbours, all this sort of thing, really,
> becomes irrelevant, if not indeed subversive. With the homeland in danger,
> strong leadership and effective measures become of the essence, and if you
> want to call that fascism, very well, call it whatever you please, no one is
> likely to be listening, unless it's for the air raids to be over and the all
> clear to sound. But the unseemliness of an argument - let alone a prophecy -
> in the heat of some later emergency, does not necessarily make it wrong. One
> could certainly argue that Churchill's war cabinet had behaved on occasion no
> differently from a fascist regime, censoring news, controlling wages and p!
> rices, restricting travel, subordinating civil liberties to self-defined
> wartime necessity.
> What is clear from his letters and articles at the time he was working on 1984
> is Orwell's despair over the postwar state of "socialism." What in Keir
> Hardie's time had been an honourable struggle against the incontrovertibly
> criminal behaviour of capitalism toward those whom it used for profit had
> become, by Orwell's time, shamefully institutional, bought and sold, in too
> many instances concerned only with maintaining itself in power.
> 
> 
>