The War of Art

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Right. That's why I didn't anywhere suggest that
Pynchon is in love with war. Melville, however,
was deeply smitten.


-----Original Message-----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, Dec 25, 2010 9:57 am
Subject: The War of Art


Isn't it a bit absurd to conclude that Pynchon & Melville are in love
with War? After re-reading Kraft's & Herman's article on Pynchon's
revisions of the Mondaugan Chapter again I was reminded that Pynchon &
Melville are, not in love with war, but are in love with Man. That so
many are caught in the vice of government war making, so that anarchy,
the argument Thoreau's paradoxical antithesis suggests, that
government is best that governs not at all, seems but a romantic or
even a Utopian dream, a place, as are all true places, not on the map,
and labor, even an Anarcharsis Cloots federated along one keel, where
the ethereal light shines on the arms of men from every port where
free men take up the trade and swing a hammer as free workers against
the day when dehumanizing war will make them slaves to laws that hang
their heroes and make men of conscience enemies of the state, but a
backround in the Art of our men of genius.

Melville's poem, _Battle Pieces_ does not expose him as a man in love
with war; he is a artist in love with his subject: Man & Labor.