"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "s~Z" <keithsz at concentric.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 10:06 PM
Subject: Re: "fascistic disposition" paragraph
>
> >>> 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. <<<
>
> Seems to me that there is no need to say the paragraph is 'alluding to'
> anything. For me it reads as a general statement regarding how attitudes
> about governmental control are affected when a nation is attacked. He is
> speaking in generalities and is not specifying any particular situation or
> time. I don't believe Pynchon is suggesting these dynamics are limited to
> 9/11, but are applicable whenever a nation is attacked. Using 'bombs
> falling' instead of 'planes crashing into buildings' keeps the assertion
> general and widely applicable.
>

I agree that this isn't limited to the post-9/11-situation in the US but I
ask: when did it happen before that the USA have been attacked?
Must've been around 1941 and even then it's been an attack on the
US-forces at Pearl Harbour and not aimed at civilians.
When did Americans make the experience of 'bombs falling' on their
homeland, 'producing casualties among friends and neighbours' and
'altering the landscape' prior to 9/11?

I think compared to 'bombs falling' the remark of 'altering the landscape'
is the stronger formulation, at least it's the one that immediately made me
think of the possibility that the 9/11-events could be meant here. Later in
the essay Pynchon speaks of a 'major subtext' that one has to see in
'Orwell's uneasiness over the 'peace''. So texts sometimes do have have
subtexts. In using the term Pynchon makes me ask: what is the subtext of
this Foreword?

Jim Knipfel:

"Early in the essay, he even hints (again without saying as much) at the
events of September 2001 and the effect such events usually have on the
political outlook of a nation. An attack on one's own homeland can suddenly
transform peace activists into dangerous subversives in the minds of most
citizens. It was something Orwell witnessed during the Blitz, and something
we've witnessed over the past year and a half."
http://nypress.com/15/33/books/

Knipfel (like me) seems to have no doubt that Pynchon is speaking to and
about present-day America. I think Pynchon wouldn't have written these
sentences this way if the September 11-terrorist attacks had not happened.
In this I disagree to Keith.

Knipfel's 'something we've witnessed' isn't formulated as a question or
possibility but presented as a fact. I can only agree. People who have
critisized the US-government in dealing with Iraq and the UN have been
accused of supporting Hussein only because of raising legal questions.

It has been asked why Pynchon doesn't say so openly, for example calling
this or that person a 'fascist' -- well, first I think it's not his way to
tell things like this straight away. Second I don't agree to Doug that the
US today "is uncomfortably similar" to what Orwell wrote in "1984" -- if it
was that easy to see more Americans would have been against the war. But
there's a tendency, to me an obvious tendency that conservative America is
trying a roll-back of developments in the society that have taken place in
the liberal democracies in the 60's and 70's. In this (I do believe) the
state of emergency is 'helpful' to those conservative minds in gaining &
keeping control. Because pointing out this in times of war is unseemly and
nobody would listen to it anyway it's absolutely ok to me to hide it in a
neat little foreword. Knipfel is right in what he says about Pynchon's
Introduction to Jim Dodge's novel "Stone Junction," "an essay which also had
quite a bit to say on matters Orwellian."

Another point is for me that Pynchon is mentioning the Pentagon (which has
been hit too) without using the name by alluding to the doublethink that
lies in naming something 'Ministry of Defence' when all this institution
actually is busy with is planning wars.

"We know better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We believe and
doubt at the same time - it seems a condition of political thought in a
modern superstate to be permanently of at least two minds on most issues."

Which describes correctly what many people abroad think of the recent wars.
We knew better when they told us they would hunt down the terrorists, smoke
them out and bring them to justice. Yet we hoped they would succeed. We knew
better when they told us this war isn't about oil yet hoped it could
nevertheless bring freedom to the Iraqi people. We are eager to believe the
world will be a safer place without someone like Saddam Hussein possessing
weapons of mass destruction but we doubt at the same time that this safety
can be guaranteed with arms.

Otto