ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[David Morris]

The thing is, outlawry is one thing.  Violence is quite another.  And
violence likely to kill a "relatively" innocent bystander is evan yet
another.  Webb understood this, and thus chose to bomb objects valued
by the Owners but not populated by anyone.  Outlawry resulting in
death is pretty clearly sin.

David Morris

On 2/27/07, Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
> Pynchon's intro to Stone Junction:
>
> "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. [snip]
>
> 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.