Anarchy

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I've been involved with Food Not Bombs for 
over 8 years now, other groups with strong anarchist
leanings as well for a long, long time. 
Luc Sante's New York Review Of Books
review of Against the Day notes that central
characters in the book seem to be folks from
our time who wandered into late 19th/early 20th
century:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19771

". . . .some of the other major characters (Kit, Dally, 
the Russian mathematician Yashmeen, and 
Cyprian in particular) sound very much like 
citizens of our own time, with recognizable 
attitudes and expectations, who happen to be 
living back then. While that sort of thing might 
be a flaw in a more conventional book, with 
Pynchon it cannot be anything but deliberate. 
It is much more true, however partial and unsatisfactory, 
to say that the book concerns a hybrid experience of time: 
the past in the present and the present in the past.    "

Anarchy was always front and center in Pynchon's
writing, but the current fashions and ideologies
of anarchy get a whole lot of face time in Against the Day. 
If you read/re-read The Crying of Lot 49, you'll see 
lots of anarchist behaviour as witnessed by a Young Republican.
In Against the Day, you witness the Anarchist vision 
through the eyes of other Anarchists.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: belimah at neomailbox.net
> I'm curious what others think of Pynchon's anarchists, or his  
> "principle" of Anarchy.  Guess I once assumed that an anarchist  
> throws bombs for the hell of it, and randomly to boot.  But Webb  
> Traverse, now, he has both a purpose and a target . . .
> 
> Tim
>