ATD SPOILER p. 95 (and also p. 214)

[Paul Mackin]

On Nov 30, 2006, at 4:50 PM, Jason Tanz wrote:

> I'm wary of inserting myself into an already not-so-civil argument,  
> but I have to agree that it may be fruitful to discuss whether  
> AtD's bomb-throwing anarchists are at all analogous to today's  
> suicide bombers. For instance, check this out, from page 214: "If  
> Webb had always been the Kieselguhr Kid, well, shouldn't somebody  
> ought to carry on the family business -- you might say, become the  
> Kid? ... Reef began to feel some new presence inside him, growing,  
> inflating -- gravid with what it seemed he must become, he found  
> excuses to leave the trail now and then and set of a stick of  
> dynamite he had stolen from the stone powder-house at some mine.  
> Each explosion was like the text of another sermon, preached in the  
> voice of the thunder by some faceless but unrelenting desert  
> prophesier who was coming more and more to ride herd on his  
> thoughts." Whew! Beautiful stuff! But also, that sense of inherited  
> struggle reminds me a lot of the suicide-bomber Palestinians in the  
> film Paradis!
>  e Now.
>
> I think this is a super-pertinent issue, actually. I can't remember  
> which reviewer, but someone suggested that in AtD, TRP immaturely  
> and dangerously romanticized terrorist acts. I'm only 250 pp. or so  
> in, but I'd imagine that AtD takes a fairly nuanced, complex, even  
> self-contradictory view of the Traverses, as opposed to blanket  
> approval. I think our man is often misread in this way -- seen as a  
> full-throated revolutionary, a card-carrying member of the  
> Counterforce, when in the end I think his work is much more  
> ambiguous about the efficacy of such Counterforces. Specifically:  
> if life is both/and rather than either/or, if these false  
> dichotomies and taxonomies are behind the world's evils, then is it  
> really safe or wise to divide the world into Them (Force) and Us  
> (Counterforce)?
>
> As an aside, this is my first post this decade. I signed up with  
> pynchon-l after I graduated from college about ten years ago, when  
> I was making my first slog through GR. Really helpful and  
> interesting, but I let it go after several months (the list, not  
> GR). I rejoined in preparation for AtD, and it's good to be back.
>
> J.

Some good thoughts.

It seems to be kind of assumed that Pynchon's oft-time portrayals of  
capitalist greed mean he's politically on the Left.

But can this be valid?

If the rewards for revolutinary, including anarchist, activity are  
destined to be granted only
in heaven--or only in Art--is this truly a Revolutionary stance?

Where is the dialectic if NO ONE IS SAVED?

I realize there's no answer but it's an interesting question.

Comments?