'Togetherness'

[jbor]

In the _SL_ 'Intro' Pynchon actually tells us that he didn't embark on the
journeyman "phase of the business" until after the publication of _V._ (22),
so suppositions that he was working "underground" at Boeing (amusing as that
one is) or that he joined the navy with the intent to write about the
experience are at odds with the available autobiographical information. The
primary evidence afforded by the 'Togetherness' article also refutes the
former claim. 

I'm also not sure what the Cuban missile crisis has to do with the
'Togetherness' article (published in December 1960). However, I agree that
it's quite possible, on the strength of the negative references to JFK in
the 'Intro' (11, 14) and elsewhere, and the satiric representation of
Yoyodyne in _Lot 49_, that one reason that Pynchon left Boeing finally was
because he wasn't particularly enamoured of the directions US foreign policy
was taking at the time and because he had come to recognise the complicity
of corporations like Boeing.

While Pynchon does draw on his life and career experiences, as a kid, in the
navy, at Cornell, on the road crew, at Boeing etc etc in his fiction, the
claim that he entered into those vocations with the "intent" to write about
them is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion.

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_together.html

best

on 28/8/04 11:09 AM, jbor wrote:
 
> It's an article written by a paid employee for a corporate newsletter
> to augment the operation manual. It's written in a light and breezy way to
> make a dull topic more interesting -- and, more overtly, to foreground the
> potential for "tragedy" in a context where the safety record is 100% clear,
> i.e. to address a potential complacency issue -- so that the target audience
> (Boeing employees involved in the airlift operation) will actually read it
> and benefit from the practical, "common sense" safety advice it
> incorporates. 
> 
> As well as jazzing up a dull topic, I'd say that it's far more likely that
> the slightly facetious tone Pynchon employs in a couple of spots in the
> article actually *downplays* whatever ideological demurs it might be
> speculated he held about US militarisation or nuclear weaponry at the time.
> In fact, on the strength of his *choice* of employment with Boeing the more
> logical speculation is that he *didn't* hold any such demurs at the time.
> 
> The express concern in the article is about accidents and loss of life
> amongst Boeing employees and US military personnel, not about blowing up
> people and places on the other side of the world. NB that in describing one
> of those "near misses" which exemplify the purpose of the article, Pynchon
> is emphatic that there were "no explosions ... because explosive items like
> squibs and initiators are shipped separately". That missiles = explosions is
> not the issue. The article is providding practical advice about how to
> airlift the Bomarc missile safely, so that accidents are avoided in the
> loading and offloading phases of transporting the missile from Boeing to the
> Air Force base. The aim of the text is to maintain the current good domestic
> transportation record so that the US Armed Forces *can* continue to bomb the
> crap out of anyone they like.
> 
> The pun in the title of the article is on working "together" -- both the
> "positive communication" between members of the crews at either end of the
> airlift (interestingly, as well as referring to the "in-group" communication
> between the human workers Pynchon talks about "communication" between the
> supervisors and the equipment they are using, which pre-empts or echoes the
> predominant animate-inanimate theme in _V._ in particular), and the Boeing
> corporation and the US Air Force continuing to work together cohesively (and
> productively) -- and on people like "Smith" and the tarmac supervisors at
> either end "keeping their heads together", so to speak, while the loading
> and unloading is going on.