VLVL "the Movement"

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> Okay, thanks for the clarification.  Especially as
> I've been at pains to forestall that all-too-easy leap
> from "conservative" to "Conservative" here myself.

Oh, just close your eyes and jump, honey. Here, I'll lend you my white
pumps. MMM MMM, don't you look fabulous. Lot a bitches be bie tin they
bottom lips when you lift your skirts, girl. 

> I've pointed out more'n' a few times here, for
> example,  that Jules Siegel's ex-wife (whose name I
> can't recall) referred to Pynchon as a coupon-cliiping
> "conservative" on this very list ...

I'm sure he's got a discount card like the rest of us by now. 

> 
> I'm not entirely sure about "traditional views and
> values."   I mean, say, casual marijuana use is still
> not exactly what most'd call "traditional" in these
> here United States.  

Get real and stop paying attention to those political spin doctors on
TV. 

Nor is the concentration of sex,
> violence, and just plain weirdness he writes into his
> books.  No matter how often happens nonetheless ...

Ah, you mean to suggest that all that weird sex and violence in the
books is the kind of stuff one expects to read in novels authored by
dissident Lefties? Oh come now. Flip from the European chapters to the
American chapters in V. and what do you find? A whole sick crew and
whole sicker one. If Pynchon is a Lefty why does he rip the Left to
shreds in Vineland? 

> 
> But I do think "dissident Left" might well prove
> correct, I believe that Pynchon generally takes his
> occasional non-fictional moment to say a little
> something about himself along with something about
> whatever he's ostensibly introducing.  There are no
> doubt Reasons why he wrote that 1984 intro ...

Orwell would not be a dissident Lefty (as P employs that term)   today,
Dave. No way. In any event, Pynchon describes himself as a very
conservative young man. He grows out of his flaky conservatism (bigotry,
Playboy misogynist, archie bunker, james bond protofascist), but he
remains a very conservative man. 
 
> And, certainly, at any rate, "condemn[ing] the
> exploitation of the working class" is generally the
> province of the left (which does not necessarily
> include the Democratic Party) here.  

No! It's a conservative and traditional working class value. It's been
the province of labor, the workers,  here in the USA, not the Left and
certainly not the dissident Left.
The workers in the USA are Lefties. The limited success of the New Left
that Pynchon describes in SL Intro is owed in large measure to the
failure of the college kid Lefties to get together with the workers (the
workers were not and are not Lefties). 


  As we all know, the big union bosses sold the heart and soul of the
working class to the democratic-republican party and labor has been
systematically dismembered by that two party coalition and the
governemt-corporate state.  Condemnation of the exploitation of workers
is not something the Left in the United States even understand. It's
beyond the pale of their experience.  Besides, the  Left in USA is
completely bankrupt. 



No, I agree, and,
> again, I think the ex-Mrs. Siegel, as well as that
> Slow Learner intro, are my sources here, Pynchon,
> sympathetic as he might have been to the various
> countercultures of the 50s, 60s (beatniks, hippies,
> student radicals, whatever) was nonetheless of a
> slightly different generation, not to mention milieu,
> was looking in from the outside, and didn't
> necessarily like everything he saw.  Again, despite
> Richard Rorty's disdain for Vineland in his Achieving
> Our Country, I suspect the two of 'em have much in
> common politically, though I think Pynchon's more
> sympathetic to Ma and Pa Rorty's old-skool Lefty-ism
> that their ingrate kid is (again, that upper-class
> class-consciouness).  "Dissident," certainly, to the
> Left as it's largely manifested himself throughout his
> adulthood.  But dissident Left (vs. both Liberal and
> Conservative) nonetheless ...
> 
> --- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > Dissident Left? Why? I can't imagine why anyone
> > > > would apply this term to Pynchon.
> >
> > > And I've some difficulty why anyone would read
> > > Pynchon as politically conservative.
> >
> > I never said I  read Pynchon as a political
> > conservative. In fact, I said Pynchon is not a
> > political conservative. That's obvious. Isn't it?
> > What kind of conservative is Pynchon? He is a
> > conservative in lots of different senses. For
> > example, he's something of a Luddite. Isn't he?
> > That's a rather conservative stance.  Pynchon
> > defines a Luddite as an early Trade Unionist. He
> > champions hard work and traditional working class
> > American values.  Pynchon condemns the
> > exploitation of the working class. Again, a
> > conservative American value. Favoring traditional
> > views and values; tending to oppose change,
> > traditional or restrained in style, a moderate and
> > cautious and conservative person.  That's Tom.
> 
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