Literature for the Age of Unease: Reading Pynchon Today

[Paul Mackin]

On May 22, 2006, at 3:00 AM, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: jbor at bigpond.com [mailto:jbor at bigpond.com]
>> http://www.newpartisan.com/home/literature-for-the-age-of-unease-
>> reading-pynchon-today.html
>>
>
> from the article (which despite being pro-Pynchon and a good read,  
> left me with a couple disagreements):
>
>> The real importance of Pynchon's works today - especially the  
>> early Crying of >Lot 49 and the persistently-neglected Vineland  
>> and Mason & Dixon - lies not >so much in their undistilled  
>> paranoia but in the constant suggestion that >trust on any large  
>> scale is not possible in America anymore.
>
> this is good as far as it goes,but isn't there more to Pynchon?
> Like, trust on any large scale has always been a painstakingly  
> crafted and marketed product purveyed for fun and profit, rather  
> than a natural upwelling of individual feeling.  Hasn't it?  I  
> think Pynchon offers something more than just paranoia, even when  
> he's dealing with paranoia - there is something he trusts (the  
> clearest statement of it I can think of is in Vineland, "Takeshi  
> calls these things giri chits, sorta karmic IOU's.  Takes a lot of  
> speed, gets grandiose, wants to base a world currency system on  
> them, so forth - but if you present one to him, he's got to honor  
> it." p 100; or when Pig Bodine has to back off Paola because of  
> BP's hamburger in V.)

Yes, there is all together too much "trust on a large scale"  
POSSIBLE. Until recently  (fortunately no longer) about half of  
America's voters trusted George Bush, despite all sorts of reasons  
not to do so

Whether  large scale trust is WARRANTED seems to be what the author  
of "Reading Pynchon Today" had  in his pedestrian little mind.

I tend to think of "Trust" in terms of old Walter Cronkite. "The most  
trusted man in America." PR bombast.

Trust is a death for a democracy and should be discouraged in even  
the best of times (which these obviously are not).

I vote we leave Pynchon out of this silliness.



>
>> ....However, the subjects of Homer's epics are heroes, whereas  
>> every one of >Pynchon's protagonists is about as close to a loser  
>> as a literary character >can get without being named Leopold Bloom.
>
> Robert Anton Wilson summarizes Ulysses as a working out of the  
> parable of the Good Samaritan (actually there are scads of  
> references to this theme on the Web, but it was Wilson's  
> description that turned the key for me), so I have never thought of  
> him - with his rich inner life - as a loser.  That description was  
> a surprising throwaway.

Yeah, after such a literary howler, who can give much large scale  
trust to this critic.


>
>
>
>