Pynchon and War

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at yahoo.com>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 11:13 PM
Subject: Re: Pynchon and War
>
> --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > "(...) 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 dosee a lot of truth in it.>>
>
> Sure, there is truth in it, but it was never intended to be taken
> literally,
> nor as "truth", the passage Doug cited included.  I think it goes without
> saying that Pynchon's fiction doesn't believe in "truth" but in a dynamic
> of life and death.   But Doug insists in its literalness because it suits
his
> pacifism.
>

I'm not so much interested in Doug's opinion than in yours and in Pynchon's.

Some things & sayings I take literally and some I understand exactly the
other way round they've been written by P. For me it's part of the
reading-game trying to get where he's serious and where he's ironic.

>
> GR is a great work of art that deals with many things, and contains a lot
> of "true things" many of which are absurd, fantastic and
> self-contradictory. If one were to fasten into his theme of "Analysis"
> literally one might conclude he thinks mankind yould never have
> evolved into a conscious being, which is absurd, but contains some truth.
>
> David Morris
>
>

Let's get back to the Islington-photograph for a moment:

"It is the boy's smile, in any case, that we return to, direct
and radiant, proceeding out of an unhesitating faith that the
world, at the end of the day, is good and that human decency,
like parental love, can always be taken for granted - a faith so
honourable that we can almost imagine Orwell, and perhaps
even ourselves, for a moment anyway, swearing to do whatever
must be done to keep it from ever being betrayed."

I think this is exactly the attitude P. shows towards the question
of children in his novels, he points to the betrayed children like
Slothrop, Gottfried, Bianca, Prairie, Mason's sons. The biggest
betrayal is the war because when it's war we cannot guarantee
that "the world, at the end of the day, is good."

I like that "at the end of the day"-sentimentality because it's a father's
point of view. It reminds me of bringing my own child to bed, and of
course it reminds me being brought to bed as a child myself, taking for
granted that the world, at least that night, was good. And it reminds
me that, on a global scale, to most children it's more likely the exception
than the rule that the world is good at the end of the day, not only for
those who are suffering bombing raids:

"I write this during a night raid, down in the abandoned sewer.
It is raining outside. The only light is from phosphorus flares above
the city, a few candles in here, bombs. Elena is beside me, holding
the child who sleeps drooling against her shoulder. (...) Children listen,
all eyes wide, to bombs above in the streets. For them it is only an
amusement. At first they cried on being wakened in the middle of the
night. But they're grown used to it. Some even stand now near the
entrance to our shelter, watching the flares and bombs, chattering,
nudging, pointing. It will be a strange  generation.
What of our own? She sleeps."
(V. p. 310)

Otto