V-2nd Dopplegangers

[Joseph Tracy]

On Aug 18, 2010, at 5:41 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Yes, thanks for reminding us about that letter; we did read and
> discuss it here some time ago. I still don't read a clear commentary
> on the War in Vietnam in V., although some P=Listers had a go at that.
> In the sewer scene with Benny and the congregation of Rats , for
> example, we are reminded of the the Small Rain story, as Laura noted,
> and of the american colonial wars from 1900 perhaps...European Heart
> of Darkness...but there is nothing there, other than what some readers
> who served in Vietnam may read into it, that makes the scene a comment
> on that particular conflict.
What Pynchon is talking about is not a particular conflict, but a  
deeper pattern. He is not saying the scenes in SW Africa is "about'  
Vietnam, or about the holocaust, but that the essential character of  
the conflict, the net effect of the conflict is not a narrow bit of   
warfare between nations but the destruction of a culture and a way of  
being. The dragons/ gators/ grendel man beasts being slain  are  
circular forces of nature and psychologically or mythically the  
ancient worldview sees them as eternal, and wisdom as being in  
harmonic or cooperative relation to them, where the "modern" logical   
notion is that they are materials to be used , colonized, analyzed  
and shaped to human will. But for some reason persuasion is never  
enough. First the "primitive" mind must be destroyed.

In this sense the rats are not over the top at all, and the arguments  
between Ignatius and Fairing highly relevant to Vietnam.

Somehow whenever those in charge of the war machine give up on the  
doctrine of winning hearts and minds through high explosives, quietly  
leave and stop demonizing  the "primitive" Afghan, Communist,  
Native .... those people  stop being the the epicenter of evil.  
Then , rather than look in the mirror we relocate the cause of he  
world's problems to a new place where bombs can be dropped.
> My son, in Afghanistan, who recently
> read, The Things They Carried, a book I begged him to read before he
> enlisted in the army, sez the book reminds him of right now. of
> course, he is right, but he's also wrong if he attributes that reading
> to the author.
>
> Another controversial Pychon statement, another letter I read, talks
> of this mater-slave relationship; how those who are colonized and
> those who do the colonizing are bound together in ironic forces.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 2:51 PM, David Payne  
> <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So, alice, you'd see the historic chapters as the lead up the  
>> second fall, a time when people freely chose to turn themselves  
>> and others into objects? And the present (1956) chapters as after  
>> the fall, no more free choice because people are objects?
>>
>> That's interesting.
>>
>> In historic terms, that'd seem like the lead up to the world wars  
>> and the aftermath, except that Pynchon was also using this as  
>> commentary on the Vietnam war. David Seed reprinted a letter from  
>> Pynchon wherein Pynchon talks V. and describes an ongoing long  
>> term conflict wherein Western linear-ism is stomping out "Eastern"  
>> holistic-ism (not really Eastern since he was including Africans  
>> and Aztec). Well, crap, I don't have that letter with me and I'm  
>> not getting it right, but maybe you get the point or can look it  
>> up instead of trusting me to dumb down a great letter which is  
>> especially interesting for V. chapter 9.
>>
>> But to apply the "lead-up-to-fall" and "after-the-fall" stencil  
>> back to my character/scene comparisons, Bongo-Shaftsbury chose to  
>> turn himself into an automan, but Fergus Mixolydian is hooked on  
>> tv, an extension of the machine.
>>
>> And Yusef desired to turning people into tattered cloths and dead  
>> flesh, but Da Cohno is locked in fetish, an extension of a weapon.
>>
>> Eh?
>>
>> Any other twins running through V.?
>>