IVIV (10) page 157

[Mark Kohut]

i have read this more than once...it is terrific.

Can't easily find your post focusing on Adams' ongoing influence on TRP, but I just wanted to second the ob...The more I reread TRP, even this latest, as I guess you made the link, the more I see this: short or long lens, America, the world, is much less than it once was. 

--- On Sat, 10/17/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (10) page 157
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009, 5:44 AM
> There are several excellent articles,
> the publication was a special
> issue of the Oklahoma City University Law Review, it is
> Volume 24,
> Number 3 (1999). I'm fairly certain that WE can read all of
> the
> articles online at the link provided.
> 
> To the current crew, I recommend, THE PRESIDENT'S EMERGENCY
> WAR POWERS
> AND THE EROSION OF CIVIL LIBERTIES IN PYNCHON'S VINELAND by
> DAVID
> THOREEN: But by 1984, those freedoms have been trampled on
> so often,
> nibbled away by so many "incrementalists,"75 that we no
> longer
> register a complaint; the most perfunctory claim of
> "National
> Security" is enough to silence all but the most ardent
> defenders of
> civil liberties. Worse, we have become so conditioned by
> television
> cop shows that "[nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no
> more than
> the routine violations of constitutional rights these
> characters
> performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular
> of
> American expectations."76 The "smell of distant fireworks"
> refers,
> then, not only to the dispersing sulfur that accompanies
> the
> fireworks' snap, crackle, and pop, but also to those
> original
> freedoms, now relegated to the distant past.
> 
> 
> With each passing year, as U.S. citizens, Rip Van Winkle
> & Zoyd, sleep
> nearer my couch to Thee, Slothful Citizens for whom
> Television
> provides the stuff that dreams are made on, and whom, like
> children
> too excited by the bangs and bursts of rocket
> celebrations, have become a public ignorant, apathetic,
> and
> generally, complacent, gaze with a false nostalgia at the
> trivialized
> memory of a Revolution, while its Executive subverts
> constitutional
> balance, exerting force in over 70 foreign conflicts, and
> writs of
> habeas corpus are suspended by state governments. This is
> one of the
> things Pynchon hopes we will pay attention too--the smell
> of Distant
> fireworks.  Ultimately, the advance of humankind in
> Freedom must
> reflect the growth of the Spirit and Freedom has nothing to
> do with
> being left alone, nor with one's own privilege to act, nor
> with the
> abstention from action of others, but on the positive and
> co-operative
> action on the part of the communities of humans.
> Instruments of
> government, which make provision for political freedom in
> the exercise
> of more widely extended rights of self-government, have
> been framed by
> statesmen, usually in the language of one of the schools
> of
> philosophy. Bills of rights have been drawn up to afford
> judicial
> protection of civil rights, usually in the form of
> abstention from
> action or guaranties of noninterference. Within the
> framework of
> extended and diversified political and civil rights, the
> development
> of economic and civil rights, designed to provide freedom
> from fear
> and from want, has required other devises of
> implementation, for as we
> know, political rights consist in the freedom to exercise
> proper
> functions in self-government, and civil rights consist in
> freedom from
> restraint in thought, expression, worship, and
> assembly.  The freedom
> from fear, and the freedom to participate in the benefits
> of the
> progress of humanity depend, not on one's privilege to act
> as one
> would, nor in the restraints placed on others that might
> violate or
> surpress one's privileges.  In America, Pynchon sees,
> and asks that
> his sophisticated reader to see, that the ideals of
> democracy have
> been degraded to a censorious and inquisitorial CONTROL of
> thought,
> expression and action; its freedoms have been subordinated
> to
> self-interest and the accumulation of wealth; and its
> individual
> determination has been leveled to the purveying wholesale
> of articles
> of common taste. This great sleep of freedom, this great
> American
> error, this transforming of Freedom to its contrary,
> constitutes the
> "Perfect Plot" of the tragedy of American History. This is
> Pynchon's
> Politics.  Ultimately, the advance of Humankind
> involves Freedom of
> the Spirit, for freedom in this sense is the prerequisite,
> as well as
> the end, of democratic institutions.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 10:35 PM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > On Oct 16, 2009, at 7:00 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> >
> >> Ever read that Oklahoma Law Journal that takes up
> the Law in P's
> >> works? Check it out. It's online.
> >> Oklahoma City University Law Review
> >> Volume 24, Number 3 (1999)
> >
> > Here's a link to the article:
> >
> > http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/fischer24.htm
> >
> >
>