VLVL The Sisterhood: evil capitalist fascists?

[Richard Fiero]

jbor wrote:
>     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 . . .

I'm really at a loss on how "capitalist" connects with the 
Sisterhood. Please explain.
Adam Smith divided income into wages, rents and profits none of 
which is distinctly capitalist except for the allied phrase of 
1974 "rent-seeking behavior."

>  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.

"In it for the cash" is questionable. However I'm pretty sure 
there is a rather strong reactionary tendency (fascist) in New 
Ageism. Secrets of the masters, ancient wisdom and all of that.
The Sisterhood is very much fashioned after Frank Lloyd 
Wright's Taliesan West near Scottsdale Arizona which was a 
'40's and '50's phenomena. I'm not saying that Taliesan West is 
the uber-cult-commune just that joining up and kitchen work as 
described in the Sisterhood follows that model. There are a lot 
of models running in recent memory from Aliester Crowley 
through Carlos Castenada and beyond. They didn't have the Puncutron though.

I think jbor is on to something here but isn't going to find it 
due to jbor's baggage weighing so heavily. By the way, Century 
City is where you would have found lawyers -- lots of them. 
Man, you haven't lived until you're in an attorney's suite of 
offices maybe on the 28th floor and in one of the two original 
towers not far below Jack Benny's penthouse, leaned against the 
glass and peered at the ant-sized humans crawling far below. 
Fuck, I'll take another toke of that.


>  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