The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93 Republicans?

[Mark Kohut]

I would also argue that Pynchon's satire is usually beyond individuals, even George Bush......I think Pynchon believed decades before Bush that
there were "evil halfwits" in office; that with his knowledge of Puritan history, a belief in a kind of "swagger" has always come with it......
and that that swagger had not progressed beyond an "apelike trudge" is
a little they-too-are-animals not gods, perhaps a little Darwin allusion
contra true religious believers......

I, for one, have never heard Geo Bush scored as ever walking apelike.....
He, unfortunately, is fairly coordinated..jogged, dirt bike....

--- On Sun, 8/9/09, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com>
> Subject: RE: The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93 Republicans?
> To: alicewellintown at gmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, August 9, 2009, 6:36 AM
> 
> Your argument is interesting, for its frshness of
> perspective. I'm not sure I 100% get what you're saying, but
> surely you can't deny the presence in ATD of *some degree*
> of criticism of Dubya Bush and his cohorts?
> 
> 
> 
> Most specifically, and famously, there's the Governor of
> Jeshimon, as mentioned here, in Peter Vernon's excellent
> article on Cricket & ATD:
> 
> 
> Pynchon, as in his other works (V. is an obvious example),
> examines a swathe of history at the end of the
> nineteenth-century, when the Imperial Powers were falling
> into decadence, and uses that history to criticize the
> contemporary period, in which society is equally out of
> joint. G.W. Bush is evidently referred to when the Chums'
> assignment to the Nation's Capital is recorded as The Chums
> of Chance and the Evil Halfwit (5). Bush is again portrayed
> as the Governor of Jeshimon: "Though he believed that the
> power that God had allowed to find its way to him required a
> confident swagger, his gait was neither earned nor, despite
> years of practice, authentic, having progressed little
> beyond an apelike trudge" (212). Post- Thatcherite,
> Blairite, soon to be Brownite Britain is seen in a "Tory
> despotism of previously unimagined rigor and cruelty" (230).
> Beyond, or below the game of the book, is the sense of
> something serious going on.
> 
>  
> http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Cricket_in_Against_the_Day
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2009 09:50:30 -0400
> > Subject: The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93
> Republicans?
> > From: alicewellintown at gmail.com
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >
> > This is not a condemnation of Bush. Pynchon is, as is
> his wont, taking
> > pages straight from history books and putting them in
> the mouths of
> > characters. Webb is giving a long talk about the
> problems as he sees
> > them through his paranoid and gnostic glass darkley.
> The Republicans
> > mentioned in the passage are not in Washington but in
> the State
> > Capital. The paranois of the gnostic-Union zealots
> like Webb is the
> > target of the satire in the passage. There is not even
> an oblique jab
> > at W. Why bother punching shit in the face. Also, the
> terms "Left" and
> > "Right" do not help us understand this work. Waste of
> time.
> 
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