"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

As I noted, I didn't read any allusion to 9/11, Bush or the Patriot Act when
I first read the paragraph by itself, even though it did strike me as
somewhat odd. (Then again, I'm not American. On the other hand, I *was*
aware that I was reading an Introduction to Orwell's _1984_.) Otto's
explanation made it seem a reasonable possibility, but now I've read the
paragraph in its proper context it does seem pretty unlikely.

When Pynchon writes that fascists and fascist-alikes "will point out that
this is pre-war thinking", the "this" refers to the previous paragraph, to
what Orwell "thought". It has to: there's nothing else that it can refer to.
Same deal (imo) with "enemy bombs", "air raids" and "the all clear" vis à
vis the Blitz.

I think I agree with s~Z that Pynchon is making a "generalisation" or three
in the paragraph. But the counter-argument that it is "both" a "general"
allusion and at the same time a specific "reference" to Bush and 9/11 makes
no sense at all.

best


>> 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.<

on 9/5/03 9:47 AM, barbara100 at jps.net at barbara100 at jps.net wrote:

> I don't know. I'm a little doubtful. Who among us (except a select super-smart
> few) knows shit about Orwell's criticism of Churchill's coalition government?
> Up until this Foreword came out, "most people were content to read [1984] as a
> straightforward allegory about the melancholy fate of the Russian revolution,"
> right? Knowing your average reader, which I bet Pynchon does, it's much more
> reasonable to think he's referring to what's happening today in the United
> States in that "fascistic disposition" paragraph.
> About the "bowdlerisation" I can't say. I copied it that way from the
> Guardian.   
> 
> 
> ---- Original Message ----
> Barbara:
>>> I mean, why switch tenses if he was only continuing along the some
>>> old of train of thought?
> 
> Jbor:
>> 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<
> 
> 
>> 
>> Foreword:
>> 
>> 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.
>>