IVIV (2) Hope

[Joseph Tracy]

This conversation hits me as both immediate and relevant to larger  
national and international questions. It also gets personal. The odd  
thing  currently is that I find myself less hopeful and I have to  
admit somewhat  less active now with the "hope president " than with  
the blatantly fascist Bush.( please no lectures about presidential  
politics, I am not a naive  in this regard) I thought that along with  
my local committments I would be a voice of support and logic for a  
national change in  direction,  but find nothing that inspires  
passion and little that inspires defense in the proposed "changes".  
The point is that having words of hope is not enough. Tapping into  
the sentiments of hopeful change without empowering a participatory  
and shared base of action and direction is an act of delusion. It  
isn't just children watching the tube and thinking "here he comes to  
save the day".  We want salvation but don't want to save ourselves.


I think the Coy, Hope,  Amethyst story is a bit more carefully  
crafted than this.  Hope has learned that the media, police,  
authorities are not to be trusted and put on her own has learned the  
self reliance needed to break her habit and raise her kid. If smack  
is capitalism in product form, another set of values transformations  
are being enacted and the new values have to be more than a new ism.  
Coy  will not be reinforcing the mighty mouse myth. Having tried   
both "lost" and "saved" he seems to end with a more nuanced view of  
that particular mythos.

Part of the point for me is that it is hard to imagine positive  
community change without seeing positive individual change.  We need  
some kind of working models.  I don't really care for the use of the  
word sentimental as an exclusively  pejorative term, but I understand  
the dangers of  delusional self comforting happy endings. I think  
Pynchon advances hopeful models tentatively and sparely. They usually  
involve fucked up , but loving families, resistance to technological  
salvation and big brother political structures, rock and roll,  
ecstatic pleasures, and dogs , though dogs  are sadly missing from  
IV. There was a great story on Fresh Air a few days ago about  
prisoners training dogs as companions for war vets. Sentiment or  
creative healing change?

On Sep 9, 2009, at 7:27 AM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

>
> Alice:
>
>> Responding to Tore's claim that Larry's promo work for the junkie
>> family is a sentimental moment akin to the sentimental moment at the
>> end of this essay, I expalined that the ending of the essay is no  
>> more
>> sentimental than the scene ort plot line in the novel.  So the  
>> evidence
>> supports my reading and not Tore's. Like that logic?
>
> What you actually said was:
>
> "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."
>
> How can you call this unsubstantiated allegation an 'explanation'?  
> How is
> it 'evidence' that supports your reading? How is it even logic? You
> obviously read the ending of the Orwell essay differently than I do,
> and that's cool - I think you made a number of good points. But you
> haven't really delivered any 'evidence' why we shouldn't read the  
> ending
> of the essay sentimentally. As John and I argued, sometimes a moment
> is more than enough. Remember Leni in GR: "There is the moment, and  
> its
> possibilities" (159). Possibilities to do nothing, sure, but also
> possibilities to do some good for a change.
>
> Calling your subjective take on the Orwell essay 'evidence' doesn't  
> make
> it so.
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