ATDDTA (3): Control issues, Chums, They

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Monte Davis:
These values bring out the best in us as individuals

and

These values are hard -- maybe impossible -- to embody in political action,
to put to work in history

> I would say that by the end of the novel, the Chums are essentially 
> Anarchists, that the values expoused on the final pages of AtD are 
> the core values of Anarchy...

"The values espoused" ... Here's where my heart always wants to go with you,
and my head always says "wait a minute."

OK, it's been at least a minute. Whether or not the values of Anarchism can 
be deployed in "political action" (and what are the characters in Pynchon's 
books doing if not demonstrating how personal actions become, inevitably, 
political?), Whether or not the values of the Chums of Chance---as 
represented in the final two pages of AtD---are said to exist in "Neverland, 
cloud-cuckoo-land, the Big Rock Candy Mountain. . . .", those values were 
the values of people just down the block from where I used to live and for a 
short time were in fact the place I lived. I've known many people who have 
lived (or at least attempted to live) by the codes of Anarchism. Those are 
my kind of people. So I must be living in cloud-cuckoo-land, and frankly 
I have no intention of leaving. Like the Man in Black once sang, "It's hard 
for me to kick against the pricks", but it never stops people from kicking 
anyway. Pynchon spends an awful lot of time focusing on the kickers.