IVIV (2) Hope

[Mark Kohut]

File this under: It all connects.

The most sympathetic character in The Man in the High Castle, just before he is to be arrested, says....."by making a choice at each step.....we can only hope."

--- 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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