"fascistic disposition" paragraph

[jbor]

on 26/5/03 2:19 AM, pynchonoid at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> Here's a question for readers who would claim that
> Pynchon does not refer to the post-9-11 US government:
> 
> How do you account for the fact that reviewers (who
> have no axe to grind with any particular P-list
> participant), readers (ditto) in other online forums
> (the Metafilter discussion, for example),

I didn't see any reference to a 9/11 or Patriot Act allusion in the
"fascistic disposition" paragraph in the metafilter discussion. Maybe
there's a more recent version than the one which was posted?

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/25551

Jim Knipfel certainly referred to "hints" to 9/11 in the "fascistic
disposition" paragraph in his review. But I don't think David Kipen did. He
wrote, in reference to the "will to fascism" paragraph on p. xvi:

    It's what he calls here "the will to fascism", the eternal
    willingness of Orwell's proles and Pynchon's beloved, sheepish
    schlemihls to scoot over and leave the driving to Daddy.

"Daddy" is an allusion to Bush Snr, isn't it?

I'm not sure about the German articles which Otto posted, but I don't recall
any mentions of the "fascistic disposition" paragraph alluding to 9/11 in
the letters in the _Guardian_ either. Seems to me there's actually quite a
few readers and commentators outside of pynchon-l who read no allusion in
the paragraph, or who haven't thought it worth mentioning if they did.

best


> and other
> readers, so easily see that the Foreword compares the
> US, post-911 and circa 2003, to the historical
> situation in which Orwell wrote _1984_ and to the
> society described in _1984_? Apart from simply
> claiming that all those readers and reviewers are just
> wrong, misguided, deluded, don't have the magic eye,
> etc.?