VLVL (6) Working for the Man

[Paul Nightingale]

> > Long Binh Jail was a US military jail. You might argue that any prison
> > system is a product of society; certainly Long Binh was a product of the
> US
> > presence in Vietnam. Interesting, therefore, that Pynchon's list should
> > start here.
> 
> What's interesting about it? Robert misspelled the name, but he made the
> same connection you make here, to Vietnam. This is a list of independent
> contractors.

Without the US presence in Vietnam there would have been no Long Binh jail
in which to incarcerate military personnel: I think that's pretty obvious.
It follows that the US presence in Vietnam actively produced the crimes for
which those individuals were locked up (they weren't locked up for the
greater crime of waging war on the Vietnamese people, of course). Having
done no research on this occasion, my shaky memory tells me something about
Long Binh being considered a measure of the poor morale of US troops in
Vietnam.

What's interesting is that the list of so-called "independent contractors"
on 87 begins here, with a state crime, the occupation of Vietnam, being
masked by the crimes of individuals.

To put it another way, the juxtaposition of 'small' to 'big' crimes is,
structurally one key to understanding the chapter as a whole.

What's interesting is reading what's on the page.