P'.s _Warlock_ Musings--Corrected Text

[pynchonoid]

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to correct and
post that here. 

> there 
> is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the
> entire set of 
> assumptions that have allowed the image to exist.

Its this  fundamental and sweeping nature of P's
critique that appeals to me.

> It
> is Blaisdell's private 
> abyss, and not too different from the town's public
> one. Before the agonized 
> epic of Warlock is over with-- the rebellion of the
> proto-Wobblies

This labor union -- mocked by at least one p-lister
here recently, in the context of discussing Vineland's
ending-- has obviously been a concern of Pynchon's for
quite a long time now.

>working 
> in the mines, the struggling for political control
> of the area, the 
> gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of
> those in power

I like his sensitivities to the human dimension of
this social element - imo P may be at his best when
fleshing out the tragic consequences of decisions made
by flawed individuals under extraordinary pressures,
even when, or especially when, those decisions lead to
the suffering of others.  Pokler in GR comes to mind,
his realization when he encounters the corollary of
his rocket science work among the dead and dying in a
Holocaust slave labor camp.  

>-- the 
> collective awareness that is Warlock must face its
> own inescapable Horror: 
> that what is called society, with its law and order,
> is as frail, as 
> precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and
> assimilated back into the 
> desert as easily as a corpse can. 

I don't think Pynchon has in mind here to propose the
kind of repression and control that is the current US
Administration's approach, as seen, for example, in
the police state-style response to the hundreds of
thousands of _peaceful_ protesters in NYC last week --
certainly not, based on what he wrote in his Intro to
_1984_. He's no fan of the post-9/11 Bushite
Repression, no matter how often a couple of folks here
make that claim.

>It is the deep
> sensitivity to abysses 

the abyss of the V? He may have been working on that
novel by the time he wrote this (I'm not certain of
the chronology), and it's likely that he had the
visual metaphor in mind already, the yo-yo movement.

>that 
> makes _Warlock_, I think, one of our best American
> novels. For we are a 
> nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb
> our candy wrapper into the 
> Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive
> away; and we need voices 
> like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece
> of paper, still 
> fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall.

...a trajectory not unlike several others we see in
the laterworks of the inimitable

> -- Thomas Pynchon

Interesting how much of the best of his writing lies
in the slightest of his works.  I'm glad some of us
managed to resist the voices that said these
uncollected pieces aren't worth reading.



=====
http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"


		
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