ATDDTA (6) 166 - 170 a

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

           Tore Rye Andersen:
           Kindness - or more precisely, what one of 
           Pynchon's disciples David Foster Wallace 
           calls "raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness" 
           (Infinite Jest, 203) - is a seemingly modest 
           and innocuous force, but in the wise words 
           of Darth Vader, one should never 
           underestimate the power of this Force in 
           Pynchon's (or Dickens', Nabokov's, and 
           Wallace's) work.

I suppose that my definition of a functional Anarchistic force is Food Not 
Bombs. I don't know if you've seen the recent movie "Stranger Than Fiction", 
but as Harold (the robotized IRS guy), early on, pursues Ana (the far-left, 
tattooed earth-mother chick) at her little bakery, there's this interesting 
cultural signal. At one point Ana climbs up the stairs, and there's this shot 
of the wall behind her, typically encrusted with multiple layers of flyers and 
posters. Centered as if framed is a Food Not Bombs poster, the only 
readable visual element on the wall, the classic four-color poster, orange 
carrot with green leaves in a clenched, raised and purple fist (is this too 
precious, or what?), and from that moment on the audience knows how 
good she is, how kind Ana is, how she's inherently giving. This figures 
heavily in the movie's plot as it rolls along. And I've gotta say that it's nice 
to be involved with people with that kind of rep. But it is precisely at this 
level of village/community local concerns where the author gives us 
displays of that absence of exploitation, an absence that enables the 
development of social structures that are rooted in kindness.