ATDTDA (3) Dynamitic mania, 80-86

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Paul Mackin:

>I'd prefer a less childish example of reader engagement with the   
>characters in a story. Say the way, in Roth's "The Plot Against  America," 
>we REALLY REALLY want the book to end with the "Roth"  family somehow 
>restored to its pre-Lindberghian happiness? I didn't  have anything like 
>that emotion about the resolution of AtD. I only  admired the symmetry of 
>it.

I'll freely admit that my example of reader engagement was parodic, and even 
childish - just trying to have a bit of fun. So let me act like a proper 
grown-up and comment on your example: I agree that the characters of Roth's 
novel are very good, and that we REALLY REALLY want the novel to end with 
their happiness. But whereas the characters seem realistic, the ending of 
Roth's novel certainly doesn't, and "The Plot Against America" was all the 
more disappointing for it. The counterfactual premise of Roth's book works 
just fine in the beginning of the novel, but the happy resolution to the 
scary events of the novel seems hasty, contrived, and very unrealistic. Roth 
may have more insight into the human psyche than Pynchon, but he doesn't 
have a fraction of Pynchon's historical intelligence, and as a result of 
this, Roth has placed his realistic characters in an unrealistic sequence of 
historical events (and here I'm thinking especially of that hasty happy 
ending). The fairy-tale ending of AtD is even more contrived, as you point 
out, but deliberately so: I think Pynchon gives us this ending as a 
deliberate contrast to all the sad events preceding it, hoping that the 
reader will see it for just what it is: an unrealistic ending to a depiction 
of some very real historical events. Not that there aren't plenty of 
fairytale events on the preceding pages as well, but they always function as 
a sort of counterpoint to the densely detailed and well-researched reality 
described by Pynchon. Pynchon's fairytale ending is deliberately contrived, 
Roth's is just contrived: "The Plot Against America" gives us some very real 
characters in what is too clearly a story, with Aristotelian plot and all. 
AtD gives us some more unreal characters, but it situates them in a textual 
environment which IMO seems much more real than Roth's, shameless use of 
coincidence notwithstanding. In fact, Pynchon very deliberately foregrounds 
this shameless use of coincidence, whereas authors like Dickens and Tolstoy 
tried to hide it. Pynchon doesn't let us forget that we are reading a work 
of fiction, but at the same time he's taken great care to research the 
historical period he describes. That's one of the things I love about 
Pynchon. GR is on one level a phantasmagoric account of WW2, but on another 
level it's the most realistic depiction of that war I've encountered in a 
work of fiction. By putting so much effort into researching and describing 
the richness of a given historical period, be it the 18th century of M&D, 
the fin de siècle of AtD, or the WW2 of GR, Pynchon surely wishes to 
introduce some measure of "reality" into his fiction, and the hallucinogenic 
episodes of his novels don't so much detract from this reality as throw it 
into stark relief.


>OK I'll bite and try to enter into the story. This is only  lighthearted 
>chit chat.  I hope it won't be misunderstood. Here it  goes. I do tend to 
>find disapproving of the Webbs' admittedly  murderous  behavior a bit 
>reactionary.  Within the  context of  the  story, that is.  Violent action 
>is all these people have. The union  isn't going  to  help them.  
>Renouncing their brand of "anarchism"  under the circumstances would be, 
>for them, moving backwards. A   return to the life of happy robots,  To  
>push  C. Wright Mills'  phrase a few years back in time.

I never realized that disapproving of murderous behavior could be construed 
as "reactionary", within or without the context of any story. As I wrote in 
another post this morning, I tend to believe that the violent actions of the 
characters are to a large extent the natural result of the violent society 
they live in - a society where "violence is the default method of conflict 
resolution," as I put it - but surely understanding doesn't necessarily lead 
to approving. Both within and outside of the context of the story I 
disapprove of the kind of violent society that creates both violent 'bad' 
guys like Deuce Kindred and violent 'good' guys like Frank and Webb, and 
even though I to some extent believe that "The World is at Fault", to quote 
from Pynchon's comments upon Marilyn Monroe's death, I also believe that the 
characters within that world carry a large responsibility for the way things 
are. They're not just innocent victims: They have more choice in the matter 
than they realize, and I regard their murderous behavior in AtD as a way up 
upholding the violent society rather than changing it. By contributing to 
the spiral of violence, the anarchistic 'heroes' of AtD don't really work 
against the day - they ensure that it will contine as it is (and as it has 
up to this day).

Best,

Tore

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