IVIV Hope Harlingen: ( spoilers)

[Joseph Tracy]

Agree with everything you say here except the lack of tenderness. I  
find tenderness in each novel , and it tells us something about  
Pynchon's sympathies that is actually a classic ingredient of satire.  
Satire is meaningless if we have no core sympathies against which the  
stupidity, hypocrisy and self interest of the players allow us to  
laugh and shudder.

The fact that he pokes fun at almost everyone's human faults doesn't  
change his sympathies which are clearly revealed in his essays and in  
the characters in his fiction. The fact that you teach Pynchon  
doesn't turn your assertions into facts and that is what some of us  
object to. Make an argument. Make a case. Here, you have no more  
textual authority than anyone else, most of us bein fully graduated,  
and you are hardly the only one with valid and intriguing insights  
into Pynchon or culture.

I think the whole novel is bent in the direction of human tenderness  
set in opposition to social, and techno machinery. Even the shadiest  
characters seem to reveal some capacity for tenderness and  
sympathetic transformation.   In the end Doc is a hero precisely  
because he is motivated by friendship, love, even family  values( in  
the sense of tender , informing family relations) .  The inner  
indication that Sportello doesn't trust himself with kindness is why  
I  trust him a little more. It is the people unable to question their  
motives I trust least.

Hope and Hope's family moves from the periphery to the center of this  
yarn as they move to the center of Doc's motivation. Little in the  
story seriously sets back the machinations of the Fanger types and  
the glimmer of TV style hope is just a prelude to more fog. But in  
Pynchon as in Rembrandt or Jimmy Wong Howe lighting counts for a lot  
and I believe the rainbow moments are more than satire or effect. If  
gravity's rainbow is the failed Luciferian aspiration to break the  
hold of gravity( I will ascend) and leads to parabolic descent where  
all life becomes the petrochemical rocket fuel of the future, then  
Light's rainbow is also given a few starring moments in Pynchon's  
world, light through spar revealing a second universe. Real rainbows  
are circular . There is no escape. What goes around comes around. To  
merge with the anti-gravitational reality of light is to dis appear,  
to merge, to accept that death and life are part of the same  
spectrum. No one seems to touch this experience without a greater  
tenderness for all that is and Pynchon's characters often make this  
kind of journey and disappear before us.. Doc's LSD trip is also  
motivated by real tenderness for Shasta. Sure there is an element of  
lust in his interest but he is clearly concerned for her well being,  
and is guided by the insights of this experience.

I know this is heretical in today's world, but I think LSD was one  
route to spiritual insights that are far more powerful and permanent  
than the outward cultural paraphenalia and fads of the 60's, 70's.  
They are also ultimately the least escapist or self-medicating/ 
numbing  of drugs. If Wolfmann is the collector, the owner, the  
objectifier,  the winner; Doc, despite similar attractions,  is the  
open door the pursuer of mysteries, the beach bum, the visionary of  
another world (with adequate legal counsel).

On Sep 11, 2009, at 6:36 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Tony Tanner
> http://www.americansc.org.uk/Reviews/AmericanMystery.htm
>
> &
>
> Deborah Tannen
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen
>
> Brian McHale
>
> http://home.foni.net/~vhummel/Image-Fiction/chapter_4.html
>
> Richard McKeon
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McKeon
>
> After long and deep research into VL and its sources, after teaching
> it to very bright college students who have, if only because they were
> born after 1984, very insightful and sophisticated reads of media
> (although they have blind spots), I'm convinced that, although Pynchon
> must include himself as a target of his satire, VL is, many things,
> but definitely a novel about how TV has changed how we live, how we
> work and how we love. It's a jeremiad and the Tube is what it screams
> across the sky about. IV is even more grave.

>
> BTW, although I think P a very grave and negative author, this has
> nothing to do with how he may actually feel or think about things.
> When I say, P, I'm talking about the implied author of the texts (all
> of them, but specifically the novels), and not the man. I'm not
> against biographical criticism, I just don't like it. Thomas R.
> Pynchon of NYC may watch TV 12 hours everyday. It seems he either
> spent a lot of time in front of the Tube, a reasonable conjecture
> about anyone his age who grew up in America, or spent a lot of time
> reading about it. My guess is, he did both. It's not hypocracy it's
> only yarn spinning. He does it well. IV has lots of laughs. I don't
> think the fact that IV has no, none, not one, moment of tenderness,
> says anything much about Thomas R Pynchon's philosophy or his view of
> the CIA or anything like that. He just doesn't do tenderness without
> irony.
> .