ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[Chris Broderick]

Tore sez:

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. 

So I say:

Someone should introduce into the record the first
paragraph of Pynchon’s intro to Stone Junction, so
here it is.

“IF WE ACCEPT THE NOTION THAT USING POWER AGAINST THE
powerless is wrong, a clear enough set of corollaries
begins to emerge. We become able to distinguish, as
populations (thought not always their rulers) have
usually been able to do, between outlaws and
evil-doers, between outlawry and sin. Not much
analysis is needed, because it is something we can
sense in all its dead-serious immediacy. "But all they
are are bandits," the rulers whine indignantly,
"motivated only by greed." Sure. Except that, having
long known the difference between theft and
restoration, we understand the terms of the deal
whereby outlaws, as agents of the poor, being more
skilled and knowledgeable in the arts of karmic
readjustment, may charge no worse that an agent's fee,
small enough too be acceptable to their clients, ample
enough to cover the risks they have to take, and we
always end up loving these folks, we cheer for Rob
Roy, Jesse James, John Dillinger, at a level of
passion usually reserved for sports affiliation.”

I’d argue that Pynchon (particularly the Pynchon of
Vineland & AtD) takes all this at face value, and
would love nothing more than to see the Vibes of the
world get their comeuppance.  But he is less concerned
with constructing revenge fantasies, though he spends
a good deal of the book hanging us on our expectations
of such acts of revenge. He's more concerned with the
real challenges, dangers and implications of such acts
of outlawry.  And unlike, say, Major Marvy’s
castration or Mexico's final scene in GR, the acts of
comeuppance in AtD (say, for example, Frank’s shooting
Sloat Fresno) are much less triumphal in tone &
nature.  Revenge does not provide any real solutions. 
Vibe’s own eventual (sorta) comeuppance does little to
curtail the destruction of WWI that overshadows the
latter half of the book.  Subtle, indeed.

I’m with Robin in believing that it’s pretty likely
that Pynchon has been involved in some outlawry of his
own (I’m not saying he’s blown anything up, I have no
idea), and if not, is well acquainted with some who
would deserve the name.  I'd bet he’s well acquainted
with outlawry and its discontents, and I think that
his expression of this is one of the real successes in
AtD (I'd argue the same of Vineland, too).

-Chris


 
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