ATDTDA (33) - p. 921-2 - anarchism

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Stray regretfully swaps Rodrigo for the scruffy, less sexually-appealing Ewball Oust.  Oust agrees with Stray that it might be a good time to get back into arms dealing.  Oust particularly hopes for the Krupp mountain gun.

http://www.spanamwar.com/spanishkrupp75.htm

On the one hand, this was exactly what Ewball described it as: an easy to break down artillery gun of the day.  But obviously the name Krupp is the real point here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krupp

The Krupp family, A German industrial dynasty, started their business as a simple steel foundry, branched out into munitions and railway manufacture (the company logo up to the present day is based on railway wheels), becoming Hitler's chief munitions manufacturer (with the help of slave labor).

Ewball gives his take on anarchists and their reputation as bomb-chuckers:

"'There's plenty of folks who deserve to be 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'd be just honest soldiering.'"

Is this Pynchon’s opinion?  I think it is, personally.  At least it's an attitude that he has some sympathy for.  

Ewball continues:

"' … the real nihilists are working for the owners, 'cause it's them that don't believe in shit, our dead to them are nothing but dead, just one more Bloody Shirt to wave at us, keep us doin what they want, but our dead never stopped belonging to us, they haunt us every day, don't you see, and we got to stay true, they wouldn't forgive us if we wandered off the trail.'"

This really gets to Frank.  It's been six years since he shot Sloat, and Deuce, Vibe and Lake (whom Frank considers a collaborator) are still out there.  He *has* wandered off the trail.

There's a real tension here and throughout the book;

Good guys like Webb and Ewball fighting for justice by violent means.  We never really learn how many innocent lives Webb took in pursuit of justice.  He seems to be blowing up railway and mining equipment.  Ewball wants to concentrate on taking out specific bad guys (like Vibe and Deuce).  He's opposed to indiscriminate bomb-tossing.

Good guys like Reef and Kit strive for justice but are easily lured off the trail.  Is it hedonism, or some innate humanism that draws them astray?

Frank is caught somewhere in the middle.  For him, being drawn astray means being drawn Stay-wards, towards fighting for justice via violence (or at least the enabling of violence).

Laura