Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon

[pynchonoid]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> In the Foreword he hooks it up with anti-Semitism,
> which might imply that
> he's referring to the long-standing conflict in the
> Middle East.

That leaves the US out of the mix, where right-wing
Christian fundamentalists shape, to a certain degree,
policy towards Israel (Judaism, including some
extremely conservative elements that may or may not be
considered "fundamentalist" in some way) and its
neighbors (Islam).  With its insistence on the present
moment, "circa 2003" (as Pynchon repeats several
times), the Foreword also refers to that same US
Christian fundamentalist clique as it confronts Islam.

Moving farther afield, the other confrontation that's
been in the news India's right-wing Hindu
"fundamentalism" V. Pakistan's, as the two countries
play nuclear "chicken". 


> If he is,
> it's not really "fundamentalism" or a "religious
> war" like, say, the
> Crusades were religious wars.

I guess it was Bush, or one of his cue-card writers,
who first referred to the War on Terror as a
"crusade."

> It would have been an opportunity to [...] but he
>doesn't do
> that at all.

[...] 

> > Too bad P didn't say more about this.

Pynchon could have written a lot of things, but
didn't. An infinite number of Forewords that he didn't
write lie waiting to be imagined and critiqued.

=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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