IVIV (12): 195-197

[alice wellintown]

The real problem is not in the articulation of ideas, but in readers
who are reluctant to accept the reading posed because it runs against
the grain of the political reading; the reading that points a finger
at the ruling elite. This has been debated for a decade or more on
this P-list.


On 11/5/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> The fact is, Terrance's posts on "technological agency" are pointing to a
> central theme in Pynchon's work. The problem is that Terrance is not as
> articulate as he thinks he is—usually his themes dribble off into an
> effusious, Professor Irwin Corey styled web of misdirection. Still, by
> directing us to this passage, Terrance gets down to cases:
>
>
>                "It means this War was never political at all, the politics
> was
>         all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly,
> it
>        was being dictated by the needs of technology . . . by a
>        conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by
>        something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, 'Money
>        be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,'
>        but meaning, most likely, *dawn is nearly here, I need my
>        night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more*. . . . The
>        real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among
>        firms -- it was only staged to look that way -- but among the
>        different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their
>        needs which are understood only by the ruling elite . . .
>
>                Yes but Technology only responds (how often this
>        argument has been iterated, dogged and humorles as a
>        Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando
>        especially), 'All very well to talk about having a monster by the
>        tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some
>        specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't *wanted* to
>        chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of
>        civilians?  Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if
>         it'll make you feel less responsible -- but it puts you in with the
>        neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our
>        stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human
>        sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are --'"
>        (V521)
>
> The theme of technological agency, the degree that the needs of technology
> are unconcerned with the fate of humanity—this happens to be one of the
> great Science Fiction themes and one that Young Tom took up with a certain
> diabolical glee early on.
>
> Gather together science and Science Fiction related themes in Pynchon's
> novels, those elements in fiction and "real life" that enter into Tom's view
> of so-called "Technological Progress" and  autobiographical patterns start
> to leak from the texts—"I was initially seduced by Tom Swift, I thought I
> was being patriotic by learning hard science/joining the Navy/working for
> Boeing. It wasn't until I swallowed that Owsley and had these visions of
> endtimes that I realized that I was suckered into destroying the only home I
> ever knew, and now it's too late—my home's no more." I suspect the
> Sortilèges in Tom's life pointed him towards modes of living/thinking—those
> forks in the road—that could have led him back to the garden.
>
> There is a despairing aspect to Inherent Vice, an awareness that it is
> already too late. Doc's acid-induced vision of Los Angeles filling up with
> water, Sortilège's visions of the great submerged city, the awareness that
> this has all happened before—we were given these warnings a long time ago
> but we were too greedy or distracted to pay attention, to do anything when
> we could, and now it's too late—well, that's something someone of a
> scientific mind could have told us all a long time ago. Terrance's
> term—Paleotechnic—the way he points to echos of the age of coal in Gravity's
> Rainbow display essential elements of climate change—not simply temperature
> elevation, but spiritual sickness as well—I'll say it, that's brilliant.
> This is all necessary information, these are central messages in Pynchon.
> Too bad Terrance's latent hostility constantly undercuts his erudition and
> knowledge.
>
> Relinquishing those presumptuous "WE" 's with the use of the more
> responsible and accurate "I" would be a good start in the direction of less
> contemptuous discourse. Of course, Terrance is more concerned with
> maintaining a certain kind of boiling, roiling and combative debate than
> actually illuminating these texts—it's a pissing contest he wants to
> continue, and it's a pissing contest he intends to win.
>
>
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 5:14 AM, John Carvill wrote:
>
> > << Tore:
> >
> > ...And I am constructing a reading that points a finger
> > at Technology, the vast Moloch, the many-headed monster that interferes
> > with our lives and our planet in so many unpleasant ways, but a reading
> > which also points out that that monster wouldn't be moving at all if we
> > didn't have our hands up its ass.
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> > Well put!
> >
> > And once we get our hand up its ass, we soon find it has its hand up
> > our ass, and so on. Kinda like Kekule's snake dream, 'cept we're
> > awake.
> >
> > That passage of GR, and GR in general, and Pynchon in general, does of
> > course work on many levels, a fact which cuts both ways. One one hand,
> > that's why we like Pynchon so much, at least in part; but the downside
> > is that the multi-levelled, allusive, amorphous nature of the text
> > (and what's being said in it) allows for people to spin it any way
> > they choose, and if taken to extremes this spinning can reach the
> > point where all discussion is pointless, where trying to argue
> > for/against a given interpretation becomes simply absurd. And that
> > point, or somewhere well past it, is where I tend to find Alice's
> > posts landing, a lot of the time.
> >
>
>