ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Monte:

>The discussion of how and where to strike at the railroad, blending into
>Webb's anger "like a kid about to cry" at  _provocateur_ attacks arranged
>"not by Anarchists but by the owners themselves," opens a can of worms, of 
>ends and means, of justifications and smoke clouds tinged with blood, that 
>will be with us throughout the book.

It is indeed a can of fat, wriggling and blind worms that is opened here. Is 
dynamite a valid means for the end of an Anarchist Utopia, especially when 
the wrong people have an annoying way of getting in the way of explosions? 
Webb has clearly given this issue some thought:

"The tricky patch, it had seemed to Webb for a while now, came in choosing 
the targets, it being hard enough just to find time to think any of it 
through, under the daily burdens of duty and hard labor and, more often than 
you'd think, grief. Lord knew that the owners and mine managers deserved to 
be blown up, except that they had learned to keep extra protection around 
them - not that going after their property, like factories or mines, was 
that much better of an idea, for, given the nature of corporate greed, those 
places would usually be working three shifts, with the folks most likely to 
end up dying being miners, including children working as nippers and 
swampers - the same folks who die when the army comes charging in." (84-85)

We can easily agree with Webb here that bombing innocent children to 
oblivion is not a good idea, but can we also agree with him that "the owners 
and mine managers deserved to be blown up"? Webb clearly thinks so, but does 
the author of AtD think the same? A very similar discussion takes place on 
p. 922, where Ewball Oust stresses the importance of going after the right 
people:

"After a while they got into a discussion about Anarchists and their 
reputation for rude behavior, such as rolling bombs at people they haven't 
been introduced to.
"There's plenty of folks who deserve being blown up, to be sure," opined 
Ewball, "but they've got to be gone after in a professional way, anything 
else is being just like them, slaughterin the innocent, when what we need is 
more slaughterin of the guilty. Who gave the orders, who carried 'em out, 
exact names and whereabouts - and then go get 'em. That's be just honest 
soldiering."

Ewball's "to be sure" here mirrors the "Lord knew" in the previous quote: 
Both Webb and Ewball find it self-evident that there are people that deserve 
to be blown up, and the narrator doesn't question their assumptions in any 
explicit manner. He just lets them fly by, so to speak, but should we as 
readers do the same? Do we *really* need, as Ewball argues, "more 
slaughterin of the guilty"? Should we cheer when Frank blows up a trainload 
of federales with his máquina loca?:

"The explosion was terrific, shrapnel and parts of men and animals flew 
everywhere, superheated steam blasting through a million irregular flueways 
among the moving fragments, a huge ragged hemisphere of gray dust, gone pink 
with blood, rose and spread, and survivors staggered around in it blinded 
and coughing miserably." (985)

Is this is explosion really terrific, or should we rather regard it as 
terrible, and try to listen more closely to those accusing words whispered 
to Frank by that statue "Victory"/"The Angel" on p. 989 -words Frank never 
wanted to hear? It's a subtle game Pynchon plays here, perhaps more subtle 
than anything found in GR. The narrator never explicitly condemns all this 
dynamitic mania, and if one sympathizes with the Anarchists' quest for 
freedom it is altogether too easy to refrain from questioning their violent 
methods and to agree with their assessment that there are several people who 
"deserve to be blown up." The Pynchon I know wouldn't agree with this 
assessment, despite his sympathies for outlaws and preterite rebels, but in 
AtD he leaves it up to the reader to take a stance. Should we agree with 
Webb and Ewball that we need more slaughterin of the guilty? Should we even 
grin elatedly along with Flaco as he and Reef are nearly killed in an 
explosion in a café?:

"Some of these bandoleros," Flaco still grinning, "they don't care who the 
hell they do this to." (851)

Or should we do what Webb has a hard time finding the time for: should we 
think things through, and try to consider other viewpoints that are not 
explicitly stated in AtD, or that are at least hard to hear amid all the 
happy dynamite blasts of the novel?

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