ATDDTA (3): Control issues, Chums, They

[Monte Davis]

> My question is, how does it (this unresolved tension) 
> distance Pynchon from 60s New Left ideology, which tended to 
> identify personal happiness and any kind of meaning in life 
> with political action? 

Seems to me it puts him right on the bobwire fence, in that most of those in
his books whom you could label political actors are either defeated "within
the system" (e.g. Hub Gates, or the Germans in GR recalling the good fight
in Weimar days)... or have crossed some sort of line to some sort of outlaw
status. I mean, it's great to rediscover Colorado anarchism. But the fact is
that (comparatively) namby-pamby, incremental, non-dynamite reformism --
unions and farmer-labor movements, progressivism, trust-busting, even the
Teddy Roosevelt strain of <gasp> Republicans -- enlisted a hell of a lot
more people, and left a hell of a lot more legacy of change, than all the
American anarchists put together ever did.

Am I accusing P. as an ideological guide or champion of bad shit: excluding
the middle? You bet -- but that's OK, because I don't want him to be (and he
never claimed to be) an ideological guide or champion. I'm perfectly fine
with all that history not being in AtD. It's a novel -- and not a historical
novel, but a magic-unrealist, literally fabulous, vatic-prophetic
meta-novel. All kinds of middle tones get lost in his magnificent
chiaroscuro.