VLVL The Sisterhood: evil capitalist fascists?

[Don Corathers]

Made me think of Werner Erhard's est seminars, where otherwise sensible
persons signed contracts for weekends of humiliating "self-improvement." All
the rage in Southern California in1984.

http://skepdic.com/est.html

Don


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 1:34 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL The Sisterhood: evil capitalist fascists?


>     By the 1960s the kunoichi, looking for some cash flow
>     themselves, had begun to edge into the self-improvement
>     business (107.22-3)
>
> At the outset Pynchon highlights the capitalist ethos of this "ninjette"
> Sisterhood in which DL is a loyal and subservient member, and it's
> reiterated at the close of the chapter when DL tells Prairie about the
> "financial consultant name of Vicki" and "Amber the paralegal" down in LA
> who administer the finances (128.134-7). I don't believe that Pynchon is
> characterising this aspect of the organisation or DL as "fascist",
however,
> as some here seem to want to have it. It strikes me as a fairly gentle
> satire on the irony of a New Age-style resort preaching selflessness but
> being in it for the cash. And of course there's that ubiquitous Pynchon
> crack at the legal profession: "lawyer up at Century City ... since the
> indictment." (128.37-8)
>
> If anything, it's the state of affairs which exists in the retreat's
kitchen
> ("indefinite culinary penance") which might be termed "fascist", and which
> Prairie insightfully observes seems like a "type of kidnapping". It's all
> the more pertinent and immediate to her, of course, because that's the
fate
> she's facing (and it's ironic that, so far, it's Zoyd, Isaiah and DL who
> have taken her away from her home and placed her in an odd assortment of
> hostile or enclosed environments). But the text immediately makes the
point
> of the inmates that:
>
>     No -- they had all signed instruments of indenture, releases,
>     had all arrived somewhere in their lives where they needed to
>     sign. (110.19-22)
>
> I hear an echo of Kesey's _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ in this, but
> there seems to be a broader thematic point about masochism and willing
> subservience to extreme and cruel authority. It maps onto both DL's
> deference to Sister Rochelle (108.34-7) and to Frenesi's sexual fetish,
> which Prairie gets her first glimpse of (114.22-3) on the retreat's
> computer. The computer, by the way, with its user-sensitivity features and
> hyper-politeness reminds me of a more a benign version of HAL from _Space
> Odyssey 2001_.
>
> best
>
>
>