TOO reBEel or naught to reBEel ?
Joseph Tracy
brook7 at sover.net
Wed Apr 8 20:42:44 CDT 2009
my last post didn't come back to my mailbox so i am giving it a new
title and see if it flies, or lands I guess.
>> Ray
>>
>> What in Vineland, or elsewhere in Pynchon's works for that matter,
>> suggests
>> that there is any form of rebellion that is NOT a dead end?
>>
>>
> Dave
> This may be THE question to ask here. I susepct that the answer is
> either troubling, or complicated, or both ...
>
>
Paul
I think it has to do with the function of art..
That "a way out" has not yet been discovered is no reason to stop
exploring possibilities.
. It is the age old question of finding meaning, or of making it..
This struggle is made more difficult for moderns by the emptiness of
materialism and the hypocrisies of Abrahamic faiths. We live in a
civilization based on war and plutocracy. Science shows us entropy,
and, as Pynchon so powerfully shows, entropy overpowers our
attempts to order our lives, and reveals as base hucksterism the
agonistic paradigms that give the cultures we live in meaning. But
he also takes sides with the Luddites, the lost, the anarchists, the
workers , the geomantic and the tribes, those murdered by progress
and colonization, and corporations, and mindless conformity. He
does not show us how to win . No one knows how to win. But He takes
sides.
I do not think Pynchon is so harsh in his treatment of rebellion.
Certainly Nixonism/Reaganism/ Imperialism requires some kind of
rebellion or resistance. The question I see Pynchon dig into is not
whether to rebel but how to truly , deeply and effectively rebel.
And I think he is using Western historic patterns as a series of Zen
Koans to say not this, not this, not this... When a character
gets close and begins to open a more powerful or transcendent door
he or she tends to disappear. ( Cyprian, Slothrop, Professor
Vanderjuice, Kit on and off) But along the way every realization of
"not this"is a kind of rebellion against violence, nonsense, and the
delusions of desire. This is both very Christian( sermon on the
mount style) and very Buddhist. The way is as much the goal as the
goal. You cannot both be heroic and know that what you are doing is
heroic. An artist can point us to beauty and to ugliness, a
physician to health and to disease, a scientist towards how things
work and how things don't work, but rebelling against the ugly,
diseased , and unworkable does not insure beauty, health, and
practical wisdom. Killing a bad guy doesn't make you a good guy or
even do very much about the balance of power. But the V force must
be resisted, must be stopped or changed and the success or failure
of this effort to counter the V is one test of every counter
revolution, every proposition for perceiving or getting in tune with
some harmonic that tilts toward joy, compassion, altruism, peace,the
kind of freedom that is free, or at least a serious lessening of
abject misery and violence .
Returning to your original question. I see the development of the
Chums of Chance, beginning with Darby, as following a rebellion first
against age-based status and authority and ultimately against any
authority that is not a product of shared agreement. They have also
recognized their need for and included women as co-adventurers. I
see the Traverse Family rebelling against the plutocrats and their
hired guns, starting out displaced, exploited, and on the run and
ending up as a family connected to a network of resistance. They have
gone down some false paths but they have come away enriched rather
than impoverished.
The 24fps collective is a good representation of the leadership of
the youth wing of the 60s counterculture radicals. The problem is not
with the rebellion against the excesses of the empire or the form of
turning the cameras on the repression. The problem is that they are
without experience, they fail to connect deeply and patiently to the
success and methods of the Civil Rights movement, or to the well of
progressive sentiment in those who rallied around FDR and the New
Deal and to all those who knew there was further to go. They end up
out of their depth, seduced by anger, by the thrill of pushing their
parents buttons, seduced by their own success at getting attention
and unable to use the attention effectively. They come up against
very sophisticated systems of repression. Some( Frenesi) turn back,
turn on their own.
Round 1 goes to Vond
The other half of the story is about Zoyd and Prairie and the human/
inward/family aspect of the counterculture movement. The Father
becomes the mother, the daughter discovers her history, her
weaknesses, the difference between the earth and a mall, and somehow
enough strength, enough integrity that when the sky God shopping mall
master planner drops from the heavens to save her from the
wilderness, she keeps her wits and delivers a stinging insult.
Round 2 does not go to Vond
Ok Reagan is still in charge at this point. But some of the children
of the 60's revolution and many of its successes survive and continue
to root themselves in our common ground. They couldn't all be brought
back under control.
Anyway to interpret Pynchon's critiques of misdirected rebellion as
an endorsement of conformity would, I think, be way off.
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