"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[Paul Nightingale]

jbor wrote:

> You argued that it is specifically (and intentionally) an
> allusion
> to 9/11, and then later in the same post you asserted that Pynchon
uses a
> phrase such as "bombs falling" (let alone "air raids" and "the all
> clear"!)
> which doesn't match this allusive context, but only because it is
meant to
> serve a more general allusive purpose also. But if the phrases don't
apply
> to the specific context you identified (9/11) in the first instance
then
> how
> does that context become situated in the more general category of
> experience
> or behaviour which is being alluded to?

The allusion to 9/11 is one the reader will notice (or, as is clearly
the case, not) in a passage that deals ostensibly with air raids on
London. The passage works on different levels and reading on those
different levels is not such a mystery. It's how we read (and in effect
rewrite) anything. You can quite easily make a statement about situation
A that makes the reader think of another situation, B, because the
language used evokes personal memories. If you lament the loss of a
loved one who happened to drown, the listener who lost a loved one when
the house burned down is not precluded from thinking of their own loss
because the circumstances are different. P. writes this passage to
generalise: this is how people, anywhere, might think. The phrase
"casualties among friends and neighbours" encourages a personal (perhaps
'customised') reading. He goes from the particular to the general. That
shift brings in the conditional: if something, then something. He
returns to "Churchill's war cabinet" to conclude the paragraph by
returning it to the particular. The mid-paragraph shift is what opens up
the possibility of a range of readings. The emphatic use of "homeland"
(it appears twice in a few lines) is key. It is a word central to
contemporary political discourse (its use by politicians at other times
notwithstanding). It also links different kinds of identity formation
that are, precisely, akin to the particular (the locality) and the
general (nationhood): the extract I posted from Bush's speech indicates
that he (or his speechwriter) was indeed using the word in this way.

My concern has always been to attempt to analyse the writing here: what
I have just written above describes the way I think the passage in
question works as a piece of writing, the positions it offers the
reader. I have consistently used the term "allusion" because it deals
with the implicit as opposed to the explicit. I have deliberately
written, above, of "the possibility of a range of readings". I'm
intrigued that those who disagree do so by putting forward an
interpretation, one that insists a particular meaning is not possible.
So I draw attention to the difference between the word 'analysis' and
the word 'interpretation'.