AtD and 9/11

[jbor at bigpond.com]

"[[...] With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead [...]"

Cf. "[Stencil] had discovered, however, what was pertinent to his 
purpose: that she'd been connected, though perhaps only tangentially, 
with one of those grand conspiracies or foretastes of Armageddon which 
seemed to have captivated all domestic sensibilities in the years 
preceding the Great War." (V. 155)

"[...] it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, 
moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to 
the present day is intended or should be inferred."

While I do read that last statement as sarcastic or ironic it's worth 
noting, of course, that one has to be making a (selective?) assertion 
about authorial intention to rule that it is only "ironic" and that 
other, "literal" readings of it, are invalid. Another instance of "All 
readings are equal, some readings are more equal than others"?

Anyway, I don't think that the jokey anachronisms (e.g., allusions to 
Clinton smoking dope, Starbucks etc in M&D) or the fast-forwards (e.g., 
Slothrop in the '60s, Nixon and Watergate in Part IV of GR) are quite 
what Pynchon has in mind. I suspect in the blurb it's more a case of a 
sly reference to the current world situation -- economic and cultural 
imperialism, Christian and Muslim extremism, Bush & Blair, those in 
charge of the military-industrial complex etc. I also doubt very much 
that his point is that the specific 1893-WWI historical context that 
AtD will span has been used by him as some sort of stand-in for the 
present time, or that he is really endorsing the use of his work for 
the purposes of political pamphleteering or propaganda in the present 
day.

As in the 1984 'Intro' (and the SL 'Intro' too), imho he is calling 
attention to the similarities between the specific historical context 
under examination and subsequent and current situations and events 
(i.e., the "homeland" and Blitz paragraph in the 1984 'Intro' in my 
reading of it is not specifically or solely a reference to 9/11 and 
America, but to the sort of reactions which all political leaders and 
citizens have when a threat of that type and magnitude to their 
personal and civic life and liberty arises, 
including-but-not-limited-to the US response to 9/11. Read again now, 
or in 50 years time, the post-9/11 echoes become fainter and fainter.) 
I think it has more to do with a more general, quite pessimistic, 
Pynchonian vision of politics and power, social coercion and 
conformism, human ignorance and self-interest, than with simplistic 
Bush=Hitler or Bush=Churchill analogy-making.

And while it will undoubtedly be labelled as treason and blasphemy to 
say so, I sort of do agree with the point made that if P did wish to 
weigh in with his opinion about specific present-time events and make 
assertions of political or ideological affiliation, well, why hasn't he 
just gone ahead and done that directly? He's had the Op-Ed floor open 
to him for a good 30 years now. It's not as if anyone would be 
particularly surprised to hear him announce himself once and for all as 
a "Leftie" (though the particular flavour of "Leftie" he is still 
remains unclear).

best

> On 15/08/2006, at 5:42 PM, David Gentle wrote:
>
>> If you were Pynchon and you'd just written a book that made no 
>> concious reference to the modern world, that was just a historical 
>> novel (and I'm not saying that AtD is that but stay with me) how 
>> would you go about addressing that fact (if you felt that you needed 
>> to) in a blurb you'd been asked to write?
>
> It's to do with the tone of the statement in the context of that 
> paragraph. If you read sarcasm or irony into it (which I think is more 
> than reasonable, unavoidable, even), then it actually means the 
> opposite of what it says. If you choose to read it literally, without 
> any hint of irony, well, I guess it means just what it says.
>
> I think it is meant sarcastically, or sardonically, and that Pynchon 
> is referring to "the present day", in a knowingly tongue-in-cheek way, 
> as being a time of "unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, 
> moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places". That reading of 
> it would seem to be more in tune with the tone of the rest of the 
> blurb. And each of those phrases does seem apposite. And I think he 
> fully expects readers to "get" it.
>
> It's possible, just, that the sarcasm is double-edged (blank irony), 
> and that he is also taking a poke at those who infer references to and 
> opinions about specific current events which happened *after* the time 
> of writing of whichever text (like using GR to propagandise about, 
> say, the revolt in Chechnya, for example), but that might be drawing a 
> long bow.
>
> And I guess it's also possible that the sarcastic quip applies only to 
> the preceding sentence in the blurb, and not to the subject matter and 
> themes of the novel itself. But I doubt it. (I actually think that 
> comment gives pretty much open slather to the WWPD crowd. In fact, it 
> probably has something to do with a conception of history as a 
> cyclical phenomenon -- that "peaks and troughs" notion back in V.)
>
> I'm also wondering now whether "the Day" in the title could (also) 
> refer to 9/11 (as well as the Biblical "Day of Judgement"). Every 
> other man and his dog seems to have written about it.