VLVL Pynchon's filtered narration

[jbor]

 >> It's worth noting, too, that the "police state" never actually
eventuates,
>> neither in the novel nor out.

otto
> I don't think that this opinion is shared by all readers of the novel.
> 
> "Troopers evicted the members of a commune in Texas, beating the boys with
> slapjacks, grabbing handcuffed girls by the pussy, smacking little kids
> around, and killing the stock, all of which Prairie, breathing deliberately,
> made herself watch." (199)
> 
> One cannot accuse Prairie of an ideological point of view watching the
> 24fps-archives.

Well, no, but it's Frenesi who is the composer of the film. Nonetheless the
excessive brutality of the Troopers is inexcusable, and no doubt it has
happened and continues to happen -- think Rodney King, for example. But it
still doesn't make America a "police state". (And, just as a side-bar, cf.
the Becker-Traverse men poaching other people's livestock, cattle "executed
by assault rifle and chain-sawed on the spot". 368.34)

> "In those days it was still unthinkable that any North American agency would
> kill its own civilians and then lie about it." (248)
> 
> What, if not a "police state"-behaviour is what happens to the reporter from
> the radical press that "must have infiltrated" later on the press
> conference?
> 
> And what does the "In those days it was still unthinkable" mean? Doesn't it
> mean that later it was thinkable because it had happened?

Isn't the implication here that it had been happening all the time, but
no-one believed it possible, not that it was only just starting to happen?

Still, in contrast to a lot of places which are, or were, the USA isn't a
"police state" and never has been. And nor does it become one in the novel.

best