VLVL Is it OK to be a misoneist?

[jbor]

And yet, there's Pynchon's own apparent defence of Luddism -- perhaps the
most misoneistic and reactionary of all sensibilities -- in that 1984
article:

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

I suspect there's somewhat more ambivalence evident in Pynchon's writings
than some commentators are willing to acknowledge.

Overall, Brock's social diagnoses are quite apt: both this recognition of
the inevitability of a government and popular backlash against the '60s
"[r]adicals, militants, revolutionaries" (272-3), and, more pointedly, his
"genius" in seeing "in the activities of the sixties left not threats to
order but unacknowledged desires for it ... etc" (269.5-15: not so
surprising, I'd say, that this passage has been avoided like the plague). A
more productive way of understanding the resilience of political
conservatism in recent times might be to open one's eyes to the flaws and
failings of the "revolutionists", as Pynchon invites his readers to do in
_Vineland_.

best


on 5/3/04 8:12 AM, Toby G Levy wrote:

> I'm suprised there's been no discussion of the following passage from
> pp272-3:
> 
> [Brock Vond] "was a devotee of the thinking of pioneer criminologist
> Cesare Lombroso(1836-1909)...What really got his attention was the
> Lombrosian concept of 'misoneism.'  Radicals, militants, revolutionaries,
> however they styled themselves, all sinned against this deep organic
> human principle, which Lombroso had named after the Greek for 'hatred of
> anything new.' It operated as a feedback device to keep societies coming
> along safely, coherently. Any sudden attempt to change would be answered
> by an immediate misoneistic backlash, not only from the State but from
> the people themselves -- Nixon's election in '68 seeming to Brock a
> perfect example of this."
> 
> It seems to me that this is important to understanding the forces of
> reaction in this book.  and the forces of reaction in today's world as
> well. Could there be any other way to understand the success (so far) of
> the Bush cabal than misoneism?