Playboy Japan interview

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carvill John [mailto:johncarvill at hotmail.com]
> << From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net
> 
> the so-called left party repudiating Dean, the peace candidate, and
> nominating instead a frat brother of Bush whose campaign platform included a plank claiming the just necessity of preemptive war is a powerful antidote 
> to that notion
> >>
> 
> Heh heh. In considering 'left vs. right', your complaint is that the left 
> aren't left enough?!
> 
> 

actually I've been ruing that post...
first, I'm reading more into the essays than common sense entitles me to

second, even if Pynchon's undergraduate status as "apolitical" changed, mine hasn't - I'm still resolutely apolitical and a believer in "best which governs not at all" (Nabokov's dictum of "no pictures of leaders larger than postage stamps" is also good; so is "in those days there was no king in Israel and each person did as he or she pleased" after adding the "she")

the thing that made me want to say something is that I guess I was wondering if perceiving Pynchon as left-leaning is a good thing for you...
(would you bum one of his Marlboro reds and shoot the shit, or would you make fake coughing sounds and shun him)

but rather than ask directly, I labored on trying to say (and believe it or not, was thinking "rather cleverly") that left-right - if they ever were significant characterizations - seems not to be a valid spectrometer scale for what is going on.  

my point was...

...not that the Left isn't "left" enough (whatever that means: welfare, deficit spending, public works, "feeling people's pain"?) but that it's not committed enough to peace and individual liberty 

...but also, that the Right isn't right enough (balanced budget, gold standard, non-interference abroad, narrow role of gov't) because those values can be defined and do approach goodness ... whereas ignoring Hans Blix and rushing into an occupation that has demonstrably increased terrorism and violence tends away from goodness, as does a "worst-of-both-private-and-public-sector" drug benefit plan...both occupation and drug plan seemingly designed to increase public debt and maximize payments to favored companies

and that objecting to those acting "not-Rightly at all" while labeling themselves rightist, doesn't make one a leftist

nor does embracing Peace as a value worth striving for make one a Leftist, since the Left has failed to embrace Peace

damn, I just said the same thing again, still not very cleverly

...say, do you know a new novel from Pynchon's coming out this December?

Mike

"no but if you hum a few bars, I'll try'n fake it!"