afterthought per Ray and Richard

[Mark Kohut]

OK....again I think I agree but, this turkey is largely ready just for soup as you wrote, and I'm turkey-full..........

I will say 1) I think that being on the side of 'freedom', which I think I agree with, carries values and nuances which TRP puts in the texts. 

Freedom is a human value or right, let's say? Lotsa social/political/philosophical thinkers find implications about our humanity there. I say Pynchon does too and you might agree. But we may disgree on whether TRP sees history, Western History, or America at the different times of his American-centered fictions as moving toward more freedom in general. But I think cases can be made. 

Freedom looked at closely in the texts can lead, as metaphor and sometimes literally, into other areas we seem to have disagreed on. Many occult concerns in his work seem to me to be a perhaps-desperate hope for 'freedom' from scientific determinism. Seem that way to you? I might simply say that he 'embraces' the occult notion that there are stranger things in heaven and earth than in all your philosophy, Horatio---which is
why there is so much of the occult, none of which we "know' he believes at all and maybe does not. So, a kind of minimalist duality is what I'm arguing here, I guess. At least.

Re: conspiracies. Yes, there are no affirmed 'local', known ones in the texts, I agree. But that modern history is some kind of conspiracy, metaphoric compared to the known theories, maybe, but also REAL....an almost-closed set-up that is
against we humans like---just like---an assassination plot. A conspiracy we humans have conspired in but is still THERE in our world. Time and history 'conspiracies', so to speak. 

I also think we CAN find certain human values that are beyond satire lying there on his pages. V. as symbol can hardly be understood unless we get some felling for who she ONCE was, no? I tried articulating one human value with the Grace post of yesterday. Many plisters have spoken of children's innocence, starkly visible in the ways it is viciously satirized in GR, say. [Bianca] Openly a good with a few others in his fiction. IV seems to me to clearly have a theme, a value, of doing good for nothing...the hippie ethos....and doing it for the least of us----Coy, druggie with family.

That is what I meant by beyond satire. Certain dualities--a very limited certain number since the satire is about as TOTAL as it can be and still make sense--- seem contained in many of his interests as well, to me.

Thanks for all the dialogue and, I hope, mutual clarification. 

--- On Fri, 11/27/09, Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net> wrote:

> From: Ray Easton <kraimie at kraimie.net>
> Subject: Re: afterthought per Ray and Richard
> To: "'pynchon -l'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, November 27, 2009, 11:30 AM
> Mark Kohut wrote:
> > If P's massive satire in his works, which we seem to
> agree on, is NOT his only visionary weapon, THEN what values
> can we find in the text that are beyond satire? Any? Simple
> logic, basic rationality against the occult and
> conspiracies? ---He even satirizes THAT, I would suggest.
> 
> 
> 
> Do the texts "contain" values that are not themselves the
> subject of satire or some other variety of critique? 
> 
> While the concrete methods that people employ in an attempt
> to "be on the side of the preterite" *are* subjected to the
> author's critique, the bare act of choosing this side rather
> the side of the Elect seems to me to be unequivocally
> endorsed by the tests and not itself a subject of
> criticism.  The texts are on the side of Freedom even
> if the author also sees that, fucked up creatures that we
> humans are, there can never be such a thing.
> 
> 
> Ray
> 
> 
> 
> 
>