ATDDTA (3): Control issues, Chums, They

[Joseph T]

On Feb 21, 2007, at 2:55 PM, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net  
>> [mailto:robinlandseadel at comcast.net]
>> Subject: RE: ATDDTA (3): Control issues, Chums, They
>>
>>> Can't say as I disagree with Webb. Can't say that the author does
>>> either. I'd consider the possibility that our beloved author might
>>> have some experience running contraband. I'd also consider the
>>> possibility that our beloved author might have some experience
>>> running with outlaws. Just a thought, mind you. . . .
>>
>
> that just goes to show, different readings are possible.
>
> I'd venture to place Pynchon with a Voltaire or Dostoevskii in  
> terms of being a poignant and insightful social critic - but not  
> with Nietzsche or De Sade or Bakunin in terms of advocating  
> terrible behaviour.
>
> Not just because N, De S and B's notions horrify me (though they do) -
>
> The evidence I'd cite is textual: his most likeable characters have  
> been mostly apolitical, his descriptions of violence don't say "go  
> thou and do likewise" at least to me, he's willing to bend reality  
> in all sorts of directions but he doesn't depict anarchy taking  
> over by force at any point (moreso instead the creation of  
> temporary autonomous zones to be relished and learned from)
>
>  -- and extratextual: he's positioned himself within society as an  
> outsider with a different world - or worldview, subjectively pretty  
> similar a proposition - to share, not as a leader of a counterforce  
> toppling and taking over the existing order
>
> It seems to me that what's objectionable about -archy is the use of  
> force - not authority itself, which in its legitimate form is  
> granted to those who earn it by achievement, persuasion, service...
> an authority based on violence is illusory
>
> but by the same token, to equate authority with the use of violence  
> is to accept the premise, and to then use violence to counter it  
> compounds the error (a violent ethos will foster hierarchy of  
> talent in those who practice it, will kill innocent bystanders,  
> polarize and coarsen the discourse, funnel energy and money and  
> genius towards the production of more terrible arms...)
>
> Practicing a non-violent ethos will rebirth real talent-based  
> authority, and is the truly revolutionary act.
>
> These are the blinders I read Pynchon through, so I tend to see  
> that moral.
>
> and yet, and yet... you have made some telling points.  I tend to  
> subsume his sympathy for rebels within his love for humanity, but  
> that's not the only way it could be read.  If one accepts the fact  
> that we all rebel against what we feel to be unfair;then perhaps  
> there are certain acts, certain lines which when crossed deserve a  
> violent response.  I don't think so- but Webb certainly does, and a  
> lot of history continues to be made by those who do.
>
> But that history is the nightmare from which Stephen Dedalus awoke.  
> The real progress occurs through negotiation, moral suasion,  
> reformism. Those processes are stronger anyway since they don't  
> destroy the means of production.
>
> One thing we have to recognize just by participating in a forum  
> open to the weird implications of massive NSA surveillance is that  
> Pynchon is writing to an audience in which the questions are hardly  
> academic. The risks involved in questioning the Government's  
> monopoly on violence are reminiscent of 1984, or Brazil. I don't  
> know if Padilla's brain was mushy before he was proclaimed enemy  
> combatant, at this point it's been pulpified.
     I am attempting to follow nonviolent resistance, but something  
has gone terribly wrong with the traditional liberal methods of  
persuasion or we wouldn't have a government actively engaged in  
torture secret detention, and mass surveillance. And in these  
circumstances P's admiration for the whole spectrum of active  
resistance is worth close examination. Why doesn't P settle for being  
a widely admired entertainer?
   Why is it that I can go on any website and advocate violence  
against anyone America has deemed enemy with no fear of  
repercussions, but only a fool would advocate violence against such  
war criminals as Rumsfeld ,Kissinger, or Cheney, or Monsanto or Union  
Carbide.

Even those who say they hate violence want some powerful well armed  
force to stop the crime bosses of our time. Coppers or crowds to nab  
them, courts to prosecute them and take away their ill gotten gains,  
jails for some well deserved early retirement plans.

Under such circumstances as we now find ourselves , there is no  
strictly literary literature. Our tax money is going into torture and  
massively violent war crimes. Is the history and political  
sophistication that saturates all of Pynchon just a ground for  
intellectual entertainment , clever zen Koans, and  dark humor?  I  
like Pynchon's writing because, like little else that I encounter it  
allows me to think more clearly about the world I live in, and to  
laugh despite that inconvenient clarity.




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