ATDTDA - petroleurs, p.19

[kelber at mindspring.com]

ATD, p.19:

"... the relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen, even to the point of committing atrocities like those of the infamous petroleurs of Paris."


I've looked up various references to the petroleurs.  Most refer more to the petroleuses - women, often accompanied by children, who were chucking bottles and buckets of petroleum around, presumably under the orders of the Commune, when the Versailles troops were re-taking the city.  This doesn't seem to make much sense, since the Commune was disintegrating into anarchy at this point.

One eyewitness (Lissagaray) refers to:

"Then, too, was invented that legend of the petroleuses, which, born of fear and propagated by the press, cost hundreds of unfortunate women their lives. The rumour was spread that furies were throwing burning petroleum into the cellars. Every woman who was badly dressed, or carrying a milk-can, a pail, an empty bottle, was pointed out as a petroleuse, her clothes torn to tatters, she was pushed against the nearest wall, and killed with revolver-shots. The monstrously idiotic side of the legend is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate in the quarters occupied by the army."

http://www.marxists.org/history/france/archive/lissagaray/ch29.htm

This is similar to the Haymarket affair, which may have been carried out by the Government, in order to blame and punish anarchist leaders.

Also, later in ATD, Webb Traverse (I think) muses on the difficulty of knowing whether bombings were being carried out by anarchists like himself, or by agents of the mining companies who just wanted to cast blame on the anarchists.


What's surprising about the above-quoted ATD passage is that Pynchon seems to take the "invented legend" at face value, refering to the the "infamous petroleurs."  The theme of the double nature of the anarchist/terrorist runs throughout the book.  We sympathize with "good" terrorists like Webb, while fearing, subliminally, along with Pynchon, "bad" terrorists like al-Quaeda.


Laura