Pynchon's politics (again, sigh ... was VLVL

[jbor]

on 3/10/03 5:22 AM, Mike Weaver at mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:

> he's not sitting on
> the fence, and his main concern is to look long and hard at the failings of
> his own side.

What "side"? There's not the slightest scrap of evidence to suggest that
Pynchon counts himself as being on a particular "side", or that he perceives
history and society in the simplistic football match-type terms you do. If
he was on a "side" I'd say he'd have made his affiliation clear -- "declared
his sympathies" -- by now. Don't you think?

There's so much more depth and complexity to his work; this sort of narrow
pigeon-holing doesn't do it any justice at all. _M&D_, for example, can't be
so trivially glossed as the triumph of Peter Redzinger, which I suspect is
what you'd like to reduce it to.

And, beyond his own fiction, ambivalence is something which he nurtures. In
2003 there's the 'Intro' to 1984 *and* the guest spot on 'The Simpsons'.
Both/and, not either/or.
 
> Those comments referring to the
> destructive actions of US governments are the strongest evidence of P's
> sympathies, and ensure that those of us who feel the same way pay attention
> to his take on the subject.

A bit reductive, this too. When he talks about "that succession of the
criminally insane who have enjoyed power since 1945, including the power to
do something about it" (_SL_ 'Intro'), or the "worldwide" rise of fascism in
the '20s and '30s being a "failure of public will" ('Sloth' essay), it's not
only the "destructive actions of US governments" he's talking about at all.
His historical analyses and political critiques, implicit in his fictions
and more overt in his essays (which are, on the whole, pretty weak) cut
across both sides of the ledger, and in fact throw any constructed schema of
social and political relationships in terms of ledgers and "sides" into
question. From his novels it's clear that his "sympathies" are with people
as human individuals, not as categories and abstractions.

> those of us who feel the same way

Put the mirror down Mike. Open the book.

best