VLVL II: "She thought I was some great political mind ..."

lorentzen-nicklaus lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de
Mon Nov 10 04:39:00 CST 2003




° " ... commiting these crimes, major and petty, one by one against other living
humans. Maybe we all had to submit to History, she figured, maybe not --- but 
refusing to take shit from some named and specified source --- well, it might be
a different story.

'She thought I was listening,' Hub liked to put in at this point, 'hell, I would 
have listened to her read the collected works of - what's his name? Trotsky! Sure,
just to have some time with your mother. She thought I was some great political 
mind, and all's I was thinkin' was the usual sailor-on-liberty thoughts.'" (80)


Re-reading that it occured to me that this might also be autobiographical: Sasha is
Chrissie (is that her name?) and Tom Hub. Like it is with so many Americans, Pynchon's 
being-left was perhaps just a dinstinction-mark on the market of contracts & kisses ...
Today he's a gentleman, discussing Iraq politics on friday night at his dinner-party.
Perhaps Naumann's saying that "Pynchon deserves to be honored as an American patriot" is
true in more than one sense ... Actually, left motives are largely absent from M&D ...

Is the Artist as an old man a coward? 


KFL + 






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