IVIV (2) Hope

[Mark Kohut]

I have been thinking about that "moment' since Doug brought it up again.
I, too, read it like Tore and, if this was a matter of voting, I'd vote
for Tore's analysis below.....(I think there is a major perspective to explore on how the failure of the generation of Vineland happened because the daily moral choices of, say, Jefferson's America were lost. When we made our actions matter, say, many historians might argue).

But, yes, it is true that TRP does not let any of us off the hook---but he does offer those moments and, accumulated, perhaps by a Counter-Force, could effect change. Those moments are in GR. Even in TRP's most encompassing bleak vision, Against the Day, the Trespassers have come from the future with a warning about that future if....

I want to offer TRPs reading of the Epilogue in 1984, a puzzling ending to many original readers, an ending that the American Book Club---back when they often chose worthwhile books such as 1984---wanted dropped from the American edition. Orwell refused and TRP argues smartly for the glimmer of hope it allows: that by 2050 (I believe), the totalitarianism has NOT totally taken over the language, which it was doing in 1984.
The language in which we think and imagine and without which we have lost
even the concepts of a different world. 

There is Prairie at the end of Vineland, who is a contemporary of Amethyst's in 'real time', both some kind of embodiments of youthful (innocent) feminine 'values' that have a chance to mean something in the America of each book's future?

Or so this sentimentalist reads... 

--- On Wed, 9/9/09, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Subject: RE: IVIV (2) Hope
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 3:29 AM
> 
> From Pynchon's intro to 1984:
> 
> > "a faith so honourable that we can almost imagine
> Orwell, and perhaps
> > even ourselves, for a moment anyway, swearing to do
> whatever must be
> > done to keep it from ever being betrayed."
> 
> Doug:
> 
> > I read this as one of the bleakest observations in
> Pynchon's writing.
> > We -- the world, the adults in the world -- including
> the author, know
> > that the child's faith is going to be betrayed and we
> know that we are
> > going to betray it, and there's nothing to do be done
> about that
> > except hope that it might turn out otherwise. 
>  
> Well, it takes more than hope, doesn't it? It takes hard
> work and a 
> conscious effort. 'Hoping' is the same as leaning back and
> waiting for 
> someone else to take care of business, to count on that
> deus ex machina  
> rescue, as you put it. That observation you quote from the
> beginning of
> GR:
>  
> "You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come, we all
> know who we  
> are by now. No one was ever going to take the trouble to
> save _you_,  
> old fellow. . ."(GR 4)
>  
> -- is really an admonition to take responsibility for our
> own lives
> and those close to us. As you say, "Pynchon refuses to let
> us off the
> hook," but what that really amounts to is that he refuses
> to let us
> simply "hope that it might turn out otherwise." In the end,
> YOU are
> the one who really decides whether you want to betray your
> child's
> faith. You can't decide whether the world betrays it,
> that's out of
> your hands, but you CAN decide whether you want to do more
> than just 
> hope. And if you should do so, real hope may arise.
>  
> Alice:
>  
> > The fact that Pynchon says that we are allowed only *a
> moment*  to 
> > swear that we will not betray our most sacred and
> human bond, does 
> > not support the sentimental reading that Tore
> advanced.
>  
> A moment is all it takes to swear, to make a binding oath.
> It takes
> a lifetime of hard work and conscious effort to keep that
> oath, though,
> and that's why the sentimental tone is tinged with
> melancholy: Pynchon
> knows that the oath is broken all too often, if it is even
> made, but
> that is not the same as letting us off the hook. Pynchon is
> cynical
> enough to know how the world usually works, but sentimental
> enough
> to want to push it and us in a different direction, rather
> than 
> letting us sit back and shake our heads wearily and
> cynically at it 
> all.
>  
> In fact, that weary and cynical headshaking is what allows
> wars to
> occur. All the characters in AtD are speaking of the
> impending war
> as if it's a done deal, even years *before* it happens.
> They subject 
> themselves to a false determinism - equal to saying that
> "there's nothing 
> to do be done about that except hope that it might turn out
> otherwise" -
> and by doing so, the war really does grow inevitable. Of
> course it
> is naive to expect that a few individuals pushing in
> another direction
> will change one bit. That is also Mason's and Dixon's
> excuse for
> continuing their mission, even though they have their
> doubts about it.
> But one thing's for certain: If we all think that way; if
> we lean
> back resignedly and tell ourselves and each other that the
> forces of 
> history can't be rerouted, then there really is no hope.
> Pynchon
> tells us to wake up and realize that we ARE the forces of
> history:
>  
> "Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology [or the H on
> history], 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 -" (GR,
> 521)
>  
> ...or:
>  
> "You're chicken, she told herself, snapping her seat belt.
> This is 
> America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl."
> 
> (Lot 49, 150)
>  
> ...o-or, to return to those essays that express Pynchon's
> values more
> unambiguously:
>  
> "Fiction and nonfiction alike are full of characters who
> fail to do what
> they should because of the effort involved. How can we not
> recognize our 
> world? Occasions for choosing good present themselves in
> public and 
> private for us every day, and we pass them by. Acedia is
> the vernacular 
> of everyday moral life." (Nearer, My Couch, to Thee)
>  
> Passive hope or weary cynicism is the same as Acedia, and
> it is not enough. 
>  
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