VLVL (6) Sasha: Hollywood blacklists

[jbor]

on 30/9/03 5:56 AM, Mike Weaver at mikeweaver at gn.apc.org wrote:

> 
> "Not exactly a red diaper baby". What, say you, is the difference between
> 'not exactly' and 'not'?

Well, it doesn't mean that she *was* a "red-diaper baby", does it? It's
idiomatic, means not quite or not really. The household didn't overtly
embrace communism, they weren't "politically active", even when Frenesi was
a baby, but certainly during the witchhunts of the '50s: "the first rule was
still that you didn't talk about anybody else, especially not about their
allegiances. Her mother then had worked ... " (74) The description could
apply to Frenesi as easily as it does to Sasha.

> "...on the fringes of the political struggle" means near the edge but still
> part of.

It means "on the edge but still affected by". Their own friends were
betraying one another. If you're on the "fringes" of a fight the chances are
you're just rubber-necking, as Elvis might put it.

> Why was "Hub fired from a picture".

The text doesn't say. It certainly doesn't say he was fired because he was
"politically active": he was a member of IATSE by then. Perhaps because he
tended to speak his mind when he shouldn't, or "somebody had named him to
yet another kangaroo court jury board". (290)

> Sasha meeting Hub near the end of the war rapping political ponderings at him.

Hub admitting he was apolitical ("She thought I was listening ... " p. 80).

> Hub fighting for the CSU, Sasha giving him support. This is after she has,
> according to you, opted out of the struggle.

Sasha admits and feels guilt about the fact that she stopped working as a
labour organiser when the war began (75.12-16, 77.21-8), and she herself is
conscious that it, and much else in her life, has been the result of "a
helpless turn" (83.19-34). It's very similar to Frenesi's story -- Sasha
*states* that it's similar, qualitatively, quantitatively, circumstantially.

Why does the narrator say that Sasha joining "the Hotshots" was "sexually,
though not otherwise, innocent"? (78.13)

Hub certainly remains a member of the CSU: "Hub, stubborn, not yet grown out
of his wartime patriotism, stuck with the losers till the end -- without
analysis, but less forgivably naive, he assumed everybody else saw the world
as clearly as he did ... " (290, NB "wartime patriotism"). In the '50s,
however, he's with IATSE and working as a gaffer.

> The paranoia of Frenesi's childhood - "as house receptionist...list of fake
> names" we are talking mid 50s here and Sasha and Hub are still part of a
> covert network in which time both of them "suffered at the hands of the
> same son of a bitch..." Since the CSU was defeated in 1947-8 we can guess
> that Hub joined IATSE in the early 50s, yet they are still part of the
> covert radical scene in the mid 50s.

I'm not sure that the text supports this. They certainly didn't betray
anybody, and Frenesi remembers the house being under surveillance. But
Sasha's disillusionment and bitterness by this time is with *both* sides of
the political brawl (81.4-25). Their priority in the '50s was staying in
work, not with being "politically active".

> Whether they finally became politically quiescent or not is really
> irrelevant to the core issue which is how comparable are their "turns". The
> parents make necessary compromises but still hang out in the same circles,
> the daughter observes one form of solidarity (not crossing picket lines)
> while earning her bread and butter performing acts of deliberate betrayal.

I disagree. Frenesi's actions are described as being the result of the
"ancestral curse" -- "as if some Cosmic Fascist had spliced in a DNA
sequence requiring this form of seduction and initiation into the dark joys
of social control" (83) -- as much as Sasha's are.

You started off by questioning whether Pynchon presents Sasha and Hub as
turning at all, and it's patently clear that they do. They even admit it,
just like Frenesi does. Now you've tried to back-pedal and say that their
turns don't count but Frenesi's does. You're desperately trying to rewrite
the book to fit your own politics. Unhappily for you, it doesn't.

I note that you won't address the Watergate passage which shows that
Frenesi's values were still strong during the early '70s (71-2), and which
also implies that snitching *against* the government is the same as
snitching *for* the government in the long run, and that's a similar place
to where Sasha's attitude ends up also (81).

I've enjoyed the debate: thanks. The one thing which makes a bit more sense
to me now is the whole Becker-Traverse reunion thing at the end of the
novel, an echo of the way the IWW bickered itself into the ground and
thereafter devolved into a bunch of ineffectual picnic organisers who ended
up letting the fascists sneak in to steal the prize. Another failure of the
left, "a failure of public will".

best