"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

on 17/5/03 1:27 AM, Otto wrote:

> That's exactly the point of our disagreement. He's no journalist. Don't
> limit him that way.

I'm not. He's a writer writing a Foreword to a novel. He's not writing
impressionistic poetry.

> In my opinion he meant to refer to the moment from which
> on a country feels as being at war.

I've agreed many times that there are general statements in the paragraph
about the way people react in times of "war" and "emergency". The
juxtaposition seems to be between the way "dissident Left" intellectuals,
like Orwell, react, the way the general public reacts, and the way the
government reacts.

> If you want to read an ad hominem
> argument out of this I cannot convince you

Not at all. I'm grateful for the opportunity to debate with you, and with
other reasonable people on this list. The fact that we can do that amicably
is a mark of mutual respect, in my opinion. It's only to be expected that
most of the correspondence here will be about the points people disagree on.
There's much which is posted here that I agree with, but don't say as much.
Nobody wants 50 posts a day which copy something someone else has written
with "I agree" appended to the bottom.

On this particular point, you stated that "some readers don't get the full
meaning of the writing". That's saying that a "full meaning" *is* present in
the text, but a reader who doesn't recognise or accept that "full meaning"
is deficient, which is one of the ways the case for an explicit reference to
9/11 in the paragraph has been argued here. At other times you've argued
that it's a difference in interpretation, which is a different statement,
and one I agree with.

When I first read the paragraph it didn't evoke thoughts of 9/11 for me at
all. Simple as that. The same seems to have been true for many other readers
as well, including Americans and New Yorkers. When it was raised as a
possible allusion I considered the case, was momentarily persuaded, but
then, after reading the paragraph in the full context of the essay, and on
the balance of the textual evidence, I rejected the interpretation that
Pynchon was making a specific allusion. I agree that some of the general
comments might be *applied* to 9/11, and to many other situations, and that
that is part of Pynchon's meaning here. However, whether those comments are
true for every situation, and for all "measures" which governments introduce
in times of war and emergency, is extremely debatable, in my opinion.

>> (Note
>> the way the use of the present tense in the sentence situates this as a
>> hypothetical or generic proposition rather than as a specific event which
>> has happened.) If a reference to 9/11 was intended, then it is "shitty"
>> writing.
>> 
> Precisely. You say there isn't is a reference to 9/11 but if there is one
> meant then it's shitty writing because he made it so hard to get it.

No, I'm saying it'd be "shitty" writing *if* he intended a direct reference
because what he has written doesn't describe the events of 9/11.

> I call
> that argumentation wrong.

It's a straw man argument.

> But I don't blame anybody for not seeing in the
> text what I see given my general impression of the foreword. It's really
> just a difference in interpretation.

I agree with this.

> And 9/11 was the day when airplanes were turned into enemy bombs that fell
> on NYC. 

No, 9/11 was the day that foreign terrorists hijacked four passenger
airplanes and flew them directly into the WTC towers, the Pentagon and a
field in Virginia. They were visibly planes, not "enemy bombs". They flew,
they didn't "fall". New Yorkers saw them; people all around the world saw it
as it was happening. No "air raid" sirens went off, no "all clear" sounded.

> My question has been
> why "altering the landscape" specifically should refer to the London-Blitz
> and not to NYC. 

You asked "how does 'altering the landscape' relate specifically to the
Blitz?" I pointed out that it does, as do all the other descriptive details
Pynchon includes in the paragraph: "bombs begin to fall", "casualties among
friends and neighbors", "air raids", "the all clear", "Churchill's war
cabinet".

> We don't remember the London-Blitz because of a special
> destruction of this or that important building, but when NYC has been
> blitzed a very special symbolical building has been hit that had defined the
> skyline and symbolised the spirit of the most important city of the world.

The bombing of London "alter[ed] the landscape" on a nightly basis. The
association with "casualties among friends and neighbors" evokes the
particular experience and fear of the general public as the "bombs" began
"to fall", and kept falling, on suburban London during WW II.

> "With the homeland in danger, strong leadership and effective measures
> become of the essence..." (x) -- which can be correctly paraphrased with
> "homeland security." No need to rewrite anything, it's all there if one
> wants to see it.

You're swinging back to the argument that my reading is deficient. Your
paraphrase isn't grammatically or semantically accurate.

> You just seem to be arguing
> that actual or more recent events then WW2 or Korea are irrelevant to the
> foreword, no big thing, just a difference in opinion.

No, I'm not arguing that. That's a straw man argument. Yes, it is just a
difference in interpretation.
 
>> He also doesn't make any significant distinction between Stalinism and
>> Nazism (or British Labour!) in this respect:
>>  
> That's unnecessary because Orwell was talking about totalitarianism in
> general, without pushing or rejecting a special ideology.
> 
>> What is clear from his letters and articles at the time he was
>> working on _1984_ is Orwell's despair over the postwar state of
>> "Socialism". What in Keir Hardie's time had been an honorable
>> struggle against the incontrovertibly criminal behavior of
>> capitalism toward those whom it used for profit had become, by
>> Orwell's time, shamefully institutional, bought and sold, in too
>> many instances concerned with maintaining itself in power. And
>> that was just in England - abroad, the impulse had been further
>> corrupted, in immeasurably more sinister ways, leading at length
>> to the Stalinist gulags and the Nazi death camps. (x-xi)

The point I was making here is that Pynchon is saying that the "'Socialist'
... impulse had been further corrupted, ... leading at length to the
Stalinist gulags and the Nazi death camps."

>> It's interesting that there's none of that hedging from earlier in the
>> essay
>> in this particular paragraph (eg. "incontrovertibly criminal behavior",
>> "had
>> become", "in too many instances"). Pynchon certainly wears anti-capitalist
>> sentiments on his sleeve here!

> I bet he does, because war mostly has to do with capitalist interests.

Sometimes. More often not.

best