Manson Cult; was Golden Fang

[alice wellintown]

Greed is an easy target. Every satirist does a number on it. Melville
did a number on it. Milton did too. One would have to prove that
Pynchon's number on Greed is Ginsberg's Moloch and not Milton's (Greed
and not Capitalist Greed or Capitalism itself). It's difficult to
reconcile Marxism and Feminism, but maybe one could argue both are
employed judiciously in VL, AtD, and IV.


On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Well,  my own personal opinion is that Pynchon's politics have changed over
> the years and are not easily (if at all) pigeon-holed.  That said,  I can't
> help but think that Against the Day is a pretty scathing indictment of
> capitalism ("greed") and that the cops (local, state and fed) in Vineland
> are generally thought by many readers to be painted with broad fascist
> highlights.  The Crying of Lot 49 has a woman (!) as  the protagonoist
> trapped by rampant consumerism.   Gravity's Rainbow confronts the issue of
> the Preterite vs the Elect;   besides,  "They are in love, fuck the war."
>   I can't imagine that you think "The Secret Integration"  (an early story
> published in 1964,  the height of the Civil Rights struggle - the story was
> later used in V., ) is anything other than "liberal"  irony (in the terms of
> those days!).
>
> On Sep 27, 2009, at 8:26 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> Moreover, the claims of  "Protest" novel are underminded by Pynchon's
>> correspondances.
>
> ????
>
> I see it even less than I did before.   Hell yes,  Pynchon is protesting!
>  His novels have been protesting war,  capitalism, stereotyping (including
> racism/sexism, etc),  consumerism, turning the world into a series of lines
> (in all ways),  etc. and so forth ad entropism.   Show us these
> correspondences, please.
>
> Bekah
> Remember the old beautifully scripted "Fuck Communism"  bumper stickers?
>
>
> On Sep 27, 2009, at 9:16 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>>>
>>> Which novel?
>>
>> All of them.
>>
>>>
>>> " In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors
>>> War Tax Protest". Full-page advertisements in The New York Post and The
>>> New
>>> York Review of Books listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay
>>> "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax
>>> increase",
>>> and stated their belief 'that American involvement in Vietnam is morally
>>> wrong' ."  (New York Review of Books 1968:9) - Via Wiki's TPR entry
>>
>> Yes, but this doesn't support the argument that his fictions are
>> protest novels. The P-list has become a discussion of the politics of
>> Pynchon. Those who advance non-political readings or other arguments
>> are labled fascists. The FANBOYS are poor readers of fiction and,
>> frustrated muckraking journalists, who crowd out any serious critiques
>> of the works.
>>
>>> This is pre-GR but post CRoL49 and V.  His forward to  Orwell's 1984
>>>  (2004
>>> edition)  was pretty "protest" oriented, too.
>>
>>
>> He said little in that Introduction that hadn't been said by others
>> and with more clearity. What he noted is that Orwell's novel has been
>> used by the political readers of fiction to advance ideas, Left and
>> Right, that don't square with what Orwell wrote or thought. Of course,
>> this is nearly unavoidable. Once published, a cannonical text will
>> evolve in ways its author never imagined, but Pynchon, as he notes in
>> the letters, makes a concerted effort to prevent this from happening
>> to his works. That we are reading IV here as if it were some protest
>> against the CIA and the Private Police in Amerika is absurd.
>>
>
> http://web.mac.com/bekker2/
>
>
>