GR and Nixon

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 05:49, Otto wrote:
> > <<But to what purpose does Pynchon portrait corporate
> > America that way?>>
> >
> > He's not "portraying" corporate America.
> 
> What is portrayed then in GR? The effects of Puritan capitalism of American
> origin on the world from a point of view that is non-Marxian but includes
> the socialist idea in its criticism.
> 
> "Country for miles around gone to necropolis. (.) The money seeping its way
> out through stock portfolios more intricate than any geneology: what stayed
> home in Berkshire went into timberland whose diminishing green reaches were
> converted acres at a clip into paper-toilet paper, banknote stock,
> newsprint-a medium or ground for shit, money and the Word. (.) the three
> American truths, powering the American mobility, claimed the Slothrops,
> clasped them for good to the country's fate. (.) Interest from various
> numbered trusts was still turned, by family banks down in Boston every
> second or third generation, back into yet another trust, in long
> rallentando, in infinite series just perceptible, term by term, dying . but
> never quite to the zero."
> (Chap. 4, 27-28)
> 
> "His Other Kingdom is never directly described, but is potent and malign."
> (Fowler, p. 11)
> 
> > He's using contextually,
> 
> In which context? What is the context of GR, "shit, money and the Word.
> (...) the three American truths" (ibid)?

Why not wait until the end of the end of the sentence before you start
picking it apart.  One can lose the thread.
> 
> > for fictional purposes,
> 
> What are these purposes, just saying "fictional purposes" says nothing.
> 
> > something that went on during World War II,
> 
> Did it only happen in WW II?
> 
> > the time in which the novel takes place.
> 
> Given the end of the novel and all the flashbacks within the text this is
> highly debatable.

 
> 
> > It's worth reminding yourself that
> > Pynchon specifically and effectively uses the idea and
> > mood of paranoia to drive the book;
> 
> Well, I wrote a website about that long ago:

Well, then you are in a good position to take malignd's "reminder" about
how the novel employs the idea of paranoia. Or, to use your own term,
how about saying the  novel "portrays" a myriad of paranoias or
madnesses including (in the words of Michael Wood's 1973 review) "the
belief that the rocket's arc is a "clear allusion to certain secret
lusts that drive the planet," or the idea that a man, the hero of this
book, could have been twinned with a rocket in his childhood, sexually
conditioned by electronics so that a map of his sexual adventures in
London would turn out to predict the scatter of V-2s as they fell there
in the autumn of 1944. Or like the idea that the dead return, or that
angels appear to the dying; that you and I were meant for each other;
that a man could take on the fantasies of others, dream their dreams,
thereby freeing them for serious government work; that World War II was
just a shuffling of markets, the killing of so many people merely a
distraction, a sideshow for innocents, providing vivid material for
schoolbooks; that the world is run by a cluster of large chemical
companies; that the secret, real history of the world is a conspiracy of
rocket-makers; that Death's reign is at hand; that America is Europe's
colony of Death, heir to the old world's ugliest dreams and
technologies." 

(reflections on the p-list war that never ends . . . .)