Religious Fundamentalism in Orwell and Pynchon

[Malignd]

<<But, again (and again and again ...), the important
element in that passage isn't the bombs per se, but
rather, on the one hand, government response to an
attack, an emergency, a crisis, whatever, and, on the
other, the response of the citizenry to that
response.>>
 

Rather sweeping.  I think that the important element
is the changing environment--the coming of World War
II--in which Orwell's comments re the British Labor
Party and fascism are made, and whether or not that
changed environment alters the appropriateness of
those comments.  The passage, indeed the entire Intro,
is about Orwell, finally, isn't it.  (And it's worth
noting that Orwell himself stopped his protest once
war began.)  

<<Allusion does not require exactitude ...>>

This seems to me extreme backpedalling and does little
service to Pynchon.  The bombs in question, unlike jet
liners, "begin to fall," and he speaks of "air raids,"
a forties/fifties term if ever there was one.  

You may still read 9/11 in this, but saying Pynchon is
being inexact:  isn't that in the direction of
"shitty"?





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