VLVL2 Fascism

[davemarc]

On pages 371-2, Pynchon writes of the Becker-Traverse debaters:

"And other grandfolks could be heard arguing the perennial question of
whether the United States still lingered in a prefacist twilight, or whether
that darkness had fallen long stupefied years ago, and the light they
thought they saw was coming only from millions of Tubes all showing the same
bright-colored shadows. One by one, as other voices joined in, the names
began--some shouted, some accompanied by spit, the old reliable names good
for hours of contention, stomach distress, and insomnia--Hitler, Roosevelt,
Kennedy, Nixon, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, Reagan, Kissinger, that collection of
names and their tragic interweaving that stood not constellated above in any
nightwide remotenesses of light, but below, diminished to the last
unfaceable American secret, to be pressed, each time deeper, again and again
beneath the meanest of random soles, one blackly fermenting leaf on the
forest floor that nobody wanted to turn over, because of all that lived,
virulent, waiting, just beneath.

"'Political family,' Zoyd remarked, 'for sure.'"

As I've probably mentioned here in the past, I find this to be one of
Pynchon's most evocative passages, capturing the kind of debate that takes
place all the time in the US and elsewhere, including this list at this very
moment. There are those who think that the US is already fascist, those who
think it's on the precipice, and those who don't seem to think there's a
concern (in Vineland, they're presumably those who are not debating).

As Dave Monroe suggested, intellectuals who have also thought the fascist
question to be a concern include Sinclair Lewis--as early as the 1930s.
Dorothy Thompson, too. There are many more.

Terrance writes, "Why would [Pynchon] stay living a nation that is
dangerously close to fascism? Why would you? I wouldn't." It's easy to write
that, but the fact that myriad educated and wealthy targets of the Nazis
continued living in Germany before and after the rise of fascism is evidence
that reading the situation correctly and then fleeing is not as easy as it
might seem. That's one reason why many thoughtful people find the fascist
question worth exploring. Perhaps what's underneath the leaf is, um, the
American id of slavery, apathy, genocide, racism, sexism, materialism, war
crimes, political corruption, international opportunism, etc. that competes
with the, um, democratic superego that the nation has trumpeted to its own
people as well as the world at large. (Having just unleashed Freudian lingo
in this form, do I dare ask whether Jung and his crowd dealt with that "leaf
in the forest" stuff? Keith??)

d.