IVIV IV & Playboy article

[Mark Kohut]

For the sake of discussion, for the sake of my long-windedness today, the clarification I, at least, get when others respond,  I want to jump in here and just say:

I, too, think there is a deep distinct strand of cultural "conservatism" in TRP's oeuvre. Modernity has killed.........aspects of the human we should have conserved, to say it abstractly. To say it least.

A...and, I will suggest, perhaps even more incorrectly, since discussing TRPs "politics" is such a No-No and No-Win Mug's game......[feel like a mug today. Been working hard saving a library system. We seem to have won, so what's a little mugging?} 

That, perhaps, we might see TRP's "politics' as existing somewhere where the ideologies of the Right and Left meet:  where Libertarianism meets (non-violent) Anarchism.......Live Free or Die....Don't Tread on Me......Who will collect the garbage if anarchy rules? Why, we will, say the self-organizing people............

Later,

mark


--- On Sat, 10/31/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: IVIV IV & Playboy article
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009, 10:14 PM
> On Oct 31, 2009, at 6:40 PM, alice
> wellintown wrote:
> 
> >>> . . . P is a conservative, one could
> >>> argue, reactionary . . .
> >> 
> >> One could argue that P is a yo-yo or a crumpet or
> a steaming pile of
> >> dogshit. Of course, those would be all outlier
> opinions—like yours.
> > 
> > I note that you clipped the word satire from the
> phrase . . .
> 
> I call it editing—I'm pointing towards one of your
> personal idée fixes.
> 
> > . . .desribing your
> > beloved author. Of course, this is term you can't even
> begin to
> > underatand.
> 
> One thing I understand is that Pynchon's satirical models
> include the Firesign Theater, Cheech & Chong & The
> Bonzo Dog Band, good conservatives, one and all.
> 
> > At least you are consistant, you trip over parody and
> > irony too. Your reading, Pynchon tips his hat to the
> hardboiled hacks
> > because of some funny-bone affitnity has some legs,
> but its crippled
> > by your quest for political slime behind the fog.
> 
> Look, I understand perfectly well that Pynchon constantly
> mourns over what might have been. You describe this as a
> conservative bent on the author's behalf. I don't. You also
> say that Pynchon's constant comments on the paranoiac
> encroachment of the military industrial complex point away
> from specific political concerns and towards political
> paranoia as pure satire—it's as if you're saying "ignore
> that man behind that curtain!" There's plenty of other
> commentators who disagree with you on that
> point.   You've cited Charles Hollander on
> various points and I'm citing him on that point in
> particular. There is so much in Inherent Vice that
> specifically points to the CIA—that's not an accident,
> it's an essential element of the tale and it happen to be an
> element that ties it to the two other California novels. In
> fact, you're the only commentator I've read so far who harps
> on the author's political philosophy as being necessarily
> & essentially conservative. So you're an outlier.
> Statistically, your readings can be thrown out as marginal.
> 
> Yes, I see what your saying about romances, yes I can see
> what your talking about when you point to Hawthorne and
> Melville and their influence on Gravity's Rainbow and
> Against the Day and Mason & Dixon. Throw in Cervantes
> and Dante while you're at it. But the three California books
> are not so much romances—they don't owe as much to the
> authors you've been citing. They owe more to to detective
> novels. Inherent Vice is explicit about that connection and
> has lots of  direct connections to Raymond Chandler's
> novels. I'm re-reading Raymond Chandler now and constantly
> find new echos and connections with Inherent Vice in the
> tales of Philip Marlowe. Inherent Vice is not going to fit
> into the configurations you have predetermined to be
> Pynchon's "serious" pursuits. So you're gonna call it crap.
> That makes you an outlier.
> 
> 
>