Pynchon and War

[Otto]

"(...) children may be taught History as sequences
of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared
for the adult world."

Sorry David, but this isn't simply a piece of fiction & thus can be
dismissed as such. This is how history has been taught for generations and I
really do see a lot of truth in it. If I wouldn't think that P. is using
fiction to tell us what he thinks & that it's including some messages ('If
you got a message, go to Western Telegraph') I wouldn't read him so
intensive as I do, with all of you for years now. GR isn't simple
entertainment, isn't simply the 70s-pomo-version of "Catch-22," it is a
piece of fiction dealing with conspiracy & paranoia, but that doesn't mean
that people aren't terrorised in the real world too. In the years he wrote
it people in the so-called liberal democracies were regularly beaten up and
even killed by the police for simply some opinion on the war that was going
on at that time. What Pynchon is writing in GR is that children are sold to
the war by the grown-ups, that old men are sending young men to die. This
hasn't changed, and it goes for the Jihad too. I'm thinking of the most
recent terrorist attacks that are increasing ev'ry time some peace proces
seems to begin.

Children are important in Pynchon's fiction, like in every good sf they
stand for the future & the way it is written about them, how they are
presented says a lot about the writer & his faith in the future.

Otto

Ohio
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been done
long ago.
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
(CSN&Y)

Concentration Moon
Over the camp in the valley
Concentration Moon
Wish I was back in the alley
With all of my friends,
Still running free:
Hair growing out
Every hole in me
AMERICAN WAY
How did it start?
Thousands of creeps
Killed in the park
AMERICAN WAY
Try and explain
Scab of a nation
Driven insane
Don't cry
Gotta go bye bye
SUDDENLY: DIE DIE
COP KILL A CREEP! pow pow pow
(Zappa)

noch mehr Liedgut:
http://www.beepworld.de/members4/bobdylan/mehrliedgut.htm


---- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at yahoo.com>
To: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 9:14 PM
Subject: Re: Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon


>
> This passage is from a NOVEL, a work of FICTION, which has conspiracy and
> paranioa as major themes, so it makes sense in that context.  Dows anybody
> think Pynchon meant for them to be taken as NON-FICTION?  This passage is
just
> fine as a paragraph in a fictional world.  Some people are looking to make
> Pynchon their personal guru and passages of his fictions as words to live
by,
> reality be damned, which is truly laughable.
>
> David Morris
>
> >
> > > "Don't forget the real business of the War is buying
> > > and selling. The murdering and the violence are
> > > self-policing, and can be entrusted to
> > > non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is
> > > useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as
> > > diversion from the real movements of the War. It
> > > provides raw material to be recorded into History, so
> > > that children may be taught History as sequences of
> > > violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared
> > > for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a
> > > stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to
> > > try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still
> > > here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
> > > markets." (Gravity's Rainbow, p. 105)
>