IVIV IV & Playboy article

[alice wellintown]

We know you are going to discuss the politics of the text. We don't
mind. Your political reading, however, suffers from the rigid blinders
you've made and put on. The obvious politics of the texts are so
obvious that no one here is going to try to argue against them. I
outlined the grand political message of the texts in a prior post. My
summary is not at odds with the standard reading of the texts. But you
seem determined to convince us that there are no subtleties in the
obvious politics of the texts and that the works simply target the
same powerful group again and again. You are so rigid on this point
that when anyone suggests a subtle or nuanced political position, not
one against the grain, but one that either tightens or loosens the
grain of the political message, you accuse that reader of holding
ideas that only a fascist could advance. Are the texts as rigid as you
suggest? I doubt it.

I've no objection to a political reading, a biographical reading, a
feminist, Marxist, Freudian, deconstructionist, postmodernist,
post-911, genre, formalist, whatever reading, but I must object to the
hammer approach. It's too blunt.




> I'm going to talk about the political in Pynchon's writings, it's there, get
> over it.
>
> If you want to talk about something else, go ahead, but don't call me an
> idiot every time I bring the subject up. You look like a reactionary when
> you do.
>
>