present day reading

[barbara100 at jps.net]

I don't understand why it's so hard to read the present day into Pynchon's
Foreword when he goes into such detail about how Orwell's present day went
into the writing of 1984.
He tells us about Stalin, Trotsky, the Labour Party, the Tehran Conference.
He's looking at Orwell's life and time, and of course his texts, and he's
saying, Here, this is what I think 1984 is "alluding" to. So if he's doing
that with Orwell, I think it's a good idea that we be doing it with him.
Think what we'd be missing if he stubbornly omitted all the part about what
was happening in the world in Orwell's day. Lame too would it be for us omit
9/11 from our reading of his Foreword.
And when Pynchon's not detailing Orwell's present day situation, he's
detailing the time period in which the book found success in the US market
(the McCarthy era and Korean Conflict), or how 1984 is relevant to us today
(Internet, circa 2003).
Again and again throughout the Forword, Pynchon tells us that thinking is
directly linked to the time frame in which it is thought.
There is more than good reason to read 9/11 and post-9/11 allusions into
Pynchon's Foreword!
There, maybe if we say it loud enough and enough times, it will be so too...
Barbara