TOO reBEel or naught to reBEel ?

[Mark Kohut]

I'm going to say: he does judge Che..and not too positively.
 
I think his major thing for teenage girls is the possiblity of uncorrupted innocence......

And, regarding rebellion................I have been thinking that underneath TRPs satire (of all sides) in Vineland lies something like
this: Jefferson's notion of  "rebellion" --In a 1787 letter (on Shay's Rebellion, I think): I like a little rebellion every now and then for it helps to keep alive that spirit of resistance on which popular government depends. .......
 
As [some call "radical'] historian, Benjamin Barber writes of Jefferson (before quoting this): Jefferson believed in autonomous, paricipatory citizens...had a distrust of representation  and "revolutionary ardor vitalizing everyday democracy".
 
I might argue that TRP, in setting his most optimistic, positive book in the America of Jefferson's time---noting of course that almost unable-to-be-dealt with human horror of slavery----has a Jeffersonian vision of what America COULD be. 
 
Vineland is what it became instead. Pot not "participatory citizenship".....none of the sympathetic still with "revolutionary ardor vitalizing everyday democracy"...Fascists and crypto-fascists rule....
 
 
 
 
 
 

----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 11:12:30 AM
Subject: Re: TOO reBEel or naught to reBEel ?

I don't think I or anyone else here has expressed some naively optimistic view that if they (lower case) had been more politically aware in the '60s, there would have been some more successful rebellion against THEM, or attributed that view to Pynchon.  The conversation originally arose because someone expressed frustration about the window-breakers and police-fighters in London, and others of us thought such people had their place in "the rebellion" against the powers that be.

If the antiwar movement succeeded in the '60s, it was because of the broad spectrum of people involved.  The mass demos in Washington were clogged with people whose ideology allowed for little more than looking ahead to the next toke or the next piece of ass.  But their physical presence, along with radical activists of various persuasions, helped a fringe movement become a mass movement in the eyes of first the media, then the public, then the politicians.

In terms of Che (not Guevara, but the lingerie-lifting teen-hooker), I think Pynchon looks upon her without judgment and with some fondness and more than a little prurience (he clearly has a thing for teenaged girls).  But I don't think he or any of us here would consider her form of rebellion an effective one.  Ultimately, there's never going to be an effective rebellion -- we're not in line for any Nirvana on earth --but informed rebellion is one of the great experiences available for the lucky few on this planet.  It may be that Che finds shoplifting and taking creeps for their money to be a thrilling form of rebellion.  Personally, it's hard for me to believe that Che's life is as thrilling as that of a genuine rebel:  a Wobbly or a Paris Communard.  And the anti-war demonstrations must have been more exhilarating for the SDS activists than the apolitical potheads.  Rebellion for the hell of it is fun, but political awareness can only increase
the high (just a gut feelin!
g here).

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>

>Certainly Pynchon does not endorse conformity.  And equally certainly, 
>he favors rebellion.  I entirely agree with what Paul has said about 
>this.  And in particular I think the reference to Camus is quite apt 
>(can't recall now who first introduced it).  And the reference you made 
>to Buddhism also seems on the mark.
>
>My question was meant to suggest that in several recent posts, the 
>authors are mistakenly attributing to Pynchon their personal political 
>"optimism" (for lack of a better word).  Several posters take the view 
>-- "well, if they had done this, instead of that... if they had marched, 
>instead of smoking dope... if they had studied lefty thought, instead of 
>shoplifting..."  The post to which I am now responding seems at times 
>to adopt such a view.  
>
>I've no quarrel with such views -- I don't share them, but I have no 
>desire to argue against them.  But I do not see such any such view 
>present in Pynchon's writing.  On the contrary, such a view seems to me 
>distinctly un-Pychonian.
>
>Ray
>