VLVL2 Fascism

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL2 Fascism

>
>
> davemarc wrote:
> >
> >
> > Terrance writes, "Why would [Pynchon] stay living in 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.
>
> You mean it wasn't then, in Germany. Assuming that P thinks that the USA
> is a fascist State or neo-fascist State or dangerously close to a
> fascistic State, why does he stay living in the USA?

Let's go back to Jules Siegel for a moment. I remember that he told that P.
once came with a big piece of hash, obviously showing signs of paranoia
about it. Jules said something like: There's nearly nothing you can do you
cannot get out of again because of your writing. P. answered in his typical
way by reversing the statement that he fears *because* of his writing he
could get into deeper trouble than anything he could do otherwise.

> It's easy enough
> for an affluent  US citizen like Thomas R. Pynchon to flee the USA and
> go to dozens of other non-fascist nation states. Why would an affluent
> person, critical of the fascist, neo-fascist, very close to fascist,
> State, remain living in that State? If Pynchon is not dependent on the
> Fascists or Neo-Fascists in the USA, why stay? Perhaps Pynchon is not so
> foolish. He doesn't really think that the USA is a fascist state.

What about his remarks in the "1984"-Intro?

"Doublethink also lies behind the names of the superministries which run
things in Oceania-the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth
tells lies, the Ministry of Love tortures and eventually kills anybody whom
it deems a threat. If this seems unreasonably perverse, recall that in the
present-day United States, few have any problem with a war-making apparatus
named 'the Department of Defense,' any more than we have saying 'Department
of Justice' with a straight face, despite well-documented abuses of human
and constitutional rights by its most formidable arm, the F.B.I."

I do not claim that he thinks the USA are already fascist, or have been back
in '68 or '84, but I consider "Vineland" at as warning and an attempt to set
the record straight before official history can falsify the history of the
several sixties movements.

> Only
> fools believe such nonsense. But his paranoid worlds (the fictional
> worlds he creates) are another story altogether.

Only thing I have to object is that there are always aspects in his
"fictional worlds" he makes the reader to take a look what's been really on
in the real world to discover some unpleasent truths. Just two examples: the
nearly-forgotten von Trotha-genocide (V.), von Braun's (meanwhile an
American hero) involvement into the Holocaust -- Camp Dora (GR).

> In the world of VL (not
> the USA), the fascists and the idealists are lovers. The visionaries,
> the revolutionaries, the children are in love with the Man and big gun,
> the boot in the face. That's not true of the USA.

Given the real story of the Manson-murders (just one example) I'm not so
sure if your statement holds water:

 Since our first meeting in Independence, I had remained on speaking terms
with Sandy and Squeaky. (...) On her first visit to my office (...) we'd
talked about the Family credo: Sandy had maintained it was peace; I'd
maintained it was murder, and had asked how she could stomach this.
 "People are being murdered every day in Vietnam," she'd countered.
 "Assuming for the sake of argument that the deaths in Vietnam are murders,"
I responded, "how does this justify murdering seven more people?"
(Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter, New York 1974, p. 357)

> VL is a fairy tale. In
> fairy tales, the big bad giant can be a Fascist or a Nazi. But in the
> real world, we know better. Or are we sleeping. Wake up Zzzzzzzzzoyd.
>

What do we know better in the real world? That numerous Middle- and South
American & Asian tyrants have been US-creatures -- Augusto Pinochet, Ngyuen
Van Thieu. Saddam Hussein and the Taliban just as the most recent examples.
Even the Vietminh (Ho Chi Minh) had been funded by the US as long as WW-2
had been going on.

What strikes me is the realism of "Vineland," there's nothing in it I would
not expect compared to the books I've read, the oral tales I've heard and my
own experience about that time.

I don't claim that "Vineland" isn't a black fairytale, but if I'd assert
this I would try to look for the fairytale elements and would try to relate
them to specific classical fairytales.

Otto