ATD: NO SPOILERS NO PAGE # Re: Rocketmen and Wastelands

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Anarchy/anarchism appears as a theme in Pynchon's novels counterpoised to a mountain of well documented attempts at social control. Anarchy also appears within the author's deliberate failure to line up all these plot driving ducks in a neat little narrative row. You remember that passage from Gravity's Rainbow that starts : "You want cause & effect?, Alright . . " which then goes into yet another Rube Goldberg styled series of highly improbable events, in a book filled to the brim of suchlike? What is the "Trystero" if not an antique "Counterforce"? Within these counterforces there is the element of magic, a constant theme in Pynchon's novels and often overlooked or disparaged when cited. The little acts of tenderness, of real understanding, like Geli Tripping's story, show the personal side of anarchistic community and a kind of magic inaccessible to "the state".

Anarchy & Magic. That's what I look for in Pynchon's books, and I have no doubt there will be plenty in AtD.

By the way; great post Tore.

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From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>

"But IMO GR and M&D aren't attempts to order the world in a piece of fiction. T. S. Eliot described Joyce's mythical method as "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history". Pynchon's long novels are not really attempts to control, order and give shape to this immense panorama. They're attempts to REFLECT this panorama, with all its confusion, all its dread and all its information overload. The encyclopedic nature of his novels simply provide a realistic reflection of the barrage of information we're met with daily. The lack of an overt, crystalline structure isn't the same as giving in to the futility of contemporary history, however. Value and significance can easily be found in the middle of all the chaos of Pynchon's novels, but in the form of small, local kindnesses and ad hoc adventures - not through some authorial ordering of all this information into a large, clear stru
cture, or neat little parcels."