VLVL "betrayal, cowardice, destructiveness, and lying" (81)

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2004 1:12 AM
Subject: VLVL "betrayal, cowardice, destructiveness, and lying" (81)


> >>> when
> >>> McCarthyism and anti-communist witch-hunts were still going on in the
> >>> USA.
> >>> For a writer like him enough reason to be a little shy I'd say.
> >>
> >> I'm not sure that his choice (and he wasn't in the spotlight until _V._
> >> was
> >> published in 1963) had anything to do with McCarthyism and the
> >> anti-communist witchhunts of the '50s, and these certainly haven't had
any
> >> bearing on why he has decided to maintain his avoidance over the next
four
> >> decades.
>
> otto
> > Where do you get that certainty from? As "Vineland" clearly shows
Pynchon
> > sees a continuity from the 50's witchhunts to the 60's repression and
the
> > anti-drug war. He may have reasons we can't even speculate about.
> >
> > "The personnel changed, the Repression went on, growing wider, deeper,
and
> > less visible, regardless of the names in power (...)." (72)
> >
> > "(...) Troopers evicted the members of a commune in Texas, beating the
boys
> > with slapjack, grabbing handcuffed girls by the pussy, smacking little
kids
> > around, and killing the stock (...)." (199)
> >
> > "You're up against the True Faith here, some heavy dudes, talking
crusades,
> > retribution, closed ideological minds passing on  the Christian
Capitalist
> > Faith intact, mentor to protégé, generation to generation, living inside
> > their power, convinced they're immune to all the history the rest of us
have
> > to suffer." (232)
>
> None of these quotations have anything to do with McCarthyism and the
> anti-communist witchhunts of the 1950s, let alone do they justify your
claim
> that Pynchon's avoidance of publicity and the media in the 1960s and
beyond
> is due to a fear of McCarthyism and anti-communist witchhunts.
>

You shouldn't restrict your interpretation to the 60's-context these quotes
directly refer to. The "personnel changed, the Repression went on" is a
strong sentence, especially with the "Repression" with a capital "R".

And Rex tells us about "generation to generation" -- this points out both
into the past and future and hardly limits the saying to the SDS &
hippie-times. The HUAC has been there from 1938 to 1975. Activists like
Jerry Rubin had to appear before it. The Sixty's People challenged the same
elite.

Take the second quote as a comment on Mr. Bush telling the world recently:
"That's not the way we do things in America."

> There are episodes in _Vineland_ which specifically address the 1950s and
> the Hollywood blacklists, of course, but they paint a very different
picture
> from the one you're fabricating.
>
> best
>

This is precisely what our argument is about. You're interpreting the novel
differently. There's one quote missing which I wasn't able to locate because
I was lacking the time on the weekend. It's something about the replacement
of the communists as the victims of the state's repression by the drug
users. Maybe someone can help me out?

I don't deny that there has been betrayal, cowardice and lying among the
Hollywood-people in the fifties as well as among the nonconformist new left
in the sixties. But the destructiveness has been put upon all these people
by criminal government agents. This is what the novel tells too, the gun is
delivered by Brock. Rex did not go to the next store to buy a gun, which, as
we all know, is relatively easy in the US, but uses the gun smuggled in by
Frenesi to shoot Weed Atman.

Otto