IV Meanwhile back at WAMBAM'S offices

[Joseph Tracy]

On Dec 6, 2009, at 12:33 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
I just want to add another possible way to look at Khalil. Tariq Ali  
once wrote  "It was the Vietcong guerrilla fighters who really set  
the example. When they showed they could inflict major defeats on the  
Americans, people all over the world said, 'if they can do it to the  
Americans, we can too'".

  I think  there is a sense in which Khalil  represents both the  
Vietnamese Guerillas and other armed struggles against imperial  
rule.  His presence and story puts Doc through some changes . How  
seriously should we take messages from plastic nickels and dead  
presidents? It's a poser when it is Jefferson Quotes. But this  
question about liberty and tyrants is a question that certain events  
force us to consider and that P has steered readers toward a couple  
three times.




>
> On Dec 5, 2009, at 7:39 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>
>> They seem to be taking Manson's fear-inducing rep straight, yes?
>> T-shirts with the Manson family in afros an shit??
>>
>> Waiting for the deal to do down..........
>>
>> The we learn who the friends of Glen, of the small arms deal, were:
>> bunch of honky dentists working out of a 'big tooth"
>>
>> "Questions arose, like wtf was going on here, basically", thinks  
>> Doc (again).
>>
>> Uh, anyone care to expound on the novel's attitude--if you think  
>> one can be spoken of---toward WAMBAM?
>>
> I think the connection to the G Fang is showing that a certain kind  
> of militance forces its proponents into the same methods and  
> sources of supply both literally and metaphorically as the  
> Vigilants, Heroin dealers, CIA  and war profiteers. If Khalil is  
> sincere he is  at best motivated by self defense and the knowledge  
> of the violence of the system he opposes, but his plans are as  
> stupid and doomed to failure as any of the violent revolutionaries  
> that appear in Pynchon's books.  Pynchon  acknowledges their  
> justification and their romantic appeal but dismisses them as  
> juvenile fantasists, or opportunistic killers.  So what we have is   
> either a  planted provocateur or a deluded violent revolutionary  
> who has already gotten one of his friends killed.  He could easily  
> represent the beginnings  of the Symbionese liberation Army, or the  
> beginning of Al Qaeda, or John Hari the FBI plant in the Nation of  
> Islam.
>
> Malcom X became most powerful and most threatening to the powers   
> as he freed himself from the Nation of Islam, sought to reconcile  
> with civil rights leaders and his speeches reached a wider  
> audience. His black separatist  militancy was never a real threat.
>
> Often the strongest advocates of violence in resistance  
> organizations has turned out to be an FBI plant.
>
> I'm going to repost this with some further thoughts on T K's name.
>
>>
>> And, anyone else---besides me, to hisses and flames---care to  
>> suggest the
>> author's attitude?---if you think one is manifested. But in  
>> another page
>> we will have greatly complexified the question.