"Orwellian, dude!"

[Terrance]

Malignd wrote:
> 
> <<The average american has good insights.>>
> 
> There are a dozen problems with that sentence, aside
> from whether it's what P thinks.  Average?  Good?

Of course. P's dudes have good insights (dudes = the fellow who speaks
in the Foreword, Zoyd, Mucho, etc.). Good here means not bad or poor,
rather average. As I said previously, the dudes are obviously average
american guys just talking. They are not European or Western generally,
but American. And they are not literary critics or philosophers. They
are not deconstructionists or poststructuralist or  Orwell scholars. 


> 
> He sees that the government acting Orwellian.>>
> 
> Pynchon argues that this is a mis- or shallow reading
> of Orwell, treating him like a seer of events rather
> than a prophet of human motive.

Yes and No. They have good insights, they can see that the government is
acting Orwellian. But calling the present state of affairs just what
Orwell predicted is merely a typical, good, average response, but these
fellows are much different from the McCarthy maniacs who used the book
for propaganda, interrogation, criminal abuse of political power. P
warns against both kinds of readings. But the fools (like Shakespeare's
fools, have some good insights). 


> 
> P is also arguably mocking the use unto
> meaninglessness of the word "Orwellian," not unlike
> "Kafkaesque," which means a dozen different things to
> a dozen different people, many of whom have never read
> a word of Kafka (or Orwell).

Of course he is.