"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

on 9/5/03 11:40 PM, Paul Nightingale wrote:

> The allusion to 9/11 is one the reader will notice (or, as is clearly
> the case, not) 

Your argument here is that there is a definite (intentional) and specific
allusion to 9/11. Readers who don't "notice" it are somehow deficient in
their reading. 

You originally stated that "the paragraph in question is perfectly clear".
But to make your case you've asserted that the phrase "'bombs falling'
serves as a general term" which applies to the situation of
"planes-flying-into-large-buildings". Unhappily it doesn't, and the
connection to 9/11 is far from "perfectly clear" in the actual text.

In another post you made the statement that allusions don't need to be
intentional, which is a slightly different proposition to the one above. I
don't have a problem with the idea that some readers will make inferences
regarding other events and situations from what Pynchon has written.

I didn't make any connection to 9/11 when I first read the paragraph in
isolation. The term "homeland" figures so frequently in political rhetoric
from the '20s, 30s, and WWII, particularly Churchill's ("Jewish homeland",
"Nazi homeland" etc), seems a term which derives from that era in fact, that
it didn't seem at all incongruous (as "nothingness" does in a listing of
Christian precepts, for example) to the explicit content of the paragraph.
When the connection was suggested and supported I considered it and thought
it a reasonable proposition. However, when I finally read the Foreword in
full and realised the context in which Pynchon has situated the paragraph it
appeared highly unlikely that any specific reference to 9/11 was intended.

Some of the phraseologies which Pynchon uses in the paragraph ("all this
sort of thing", "very well, call it whatever you please") seem to evoke a
very old-fashioned, British, "pip, pip and jolly ho"-style or tone of
speech. These turns of phrase are quite distinctive within the essay. I
think the shift in the first couple of sentences of the paragraph is not
from '30s and '40s Britain to America post-2001, but from straight
biographal recount to Pynchon's narrative voice adopting, momentarily, the
mindset and speech idioms of some of Orwell's detractors from the time.

> 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.

It seems to me that you are dismissing the reading that the paragraph in
question does not specifically allude to 9/11. I can certainly accept that
you and three or four others have read an allusion to 9/11 into the
paragraph. My conclusion is that it is highly unlikely that this "meaning"
is in fact presented in the text.

This, however, might amuse:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/07/images/20010716-3.html

best


> 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'.
>