Back to V., MB's structure post cont.

[Joseph Tracy]

Yes, one can be hopeful without sliding into blind irrational  
optimism; one can actually even do something .

  On a more serious note, during the course of my life race relations  
have seriously improved world wide, but the education and living  
conditions of the majority of black Americans has not changed all  
that dramatically. Also Isn't ridicule  limited as an indicator of  
actual value? Some pretty great people and ideas have been the object  
of ridicule.

I don't see Pynchon ridiculing the aspiration to greater justice or  
freedom or a more respectful relation to nature , others, wildness,  
beauty.  What he shows again and again is the degree to which the  
essentially colonial project we call civilization actively excludes,  
subjugates and subverts any such aspirations, and the degree to  
which  the complicity of the resistance cripples the potential for  
change. America is a particularly tragic example of this process . As  
Leonard Cohen says in his insanely hopeful and cantankerously  
revolutionary song
"....It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change....
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. "

  The best and the worst. Always dual and dueling aspirations. Kind  
like dueling banjos only harder to do si do.   What Pynchon also  
shows  is the great democratizing force of entropy.  Some cosmic dust  
may be more prestigious than other cosmic dust, but  in the big  
picture it's a fairly egalitarian situation.  One of the main things  
I have liked about Pynchon is that he shuts down the delusion of  
specialness , of having our cake and eating it, of personal success  
within a monstrous system, of imagining oneself as a hero when what  
one is doing is shooting poor people.  He challenges  delusions of  
chosen and unchosen, saved and preterite.

  I'm not at all saying what follows is Pynchon's intention or  
prescription for clean living, just what it does for me. For me the  
net effect is kinda Buddhist( renunciation of illusion), kinda Taoist 
( balancing male and female) kinda Quaker/ communitarian/( embrace of  
that of God in all, the practice of local community), and kinda  
activist ( friendly change within my reach, how I live and work).  
Liberation has to do with letting go of the drama of self and grand  
schemes of power or truth, with not participating in violence,  with  
enjoyment and pleasure without ownership or control. The quaker side  
is the shared apprehension of what is sacred and the continuous  
expansion of that circle.

   Gardening and the occasional Guinness also helps.



On Sep 3, 2010, at 4:11 AM, John Bailey wrote:

> Excellent point. So is the lost possibility offered by
> Vineland/America something worth rescuing or are those who attempt to
> do so objects of (perhaps melancholy) ridicule? Think the latter is
> what Alice was suggesting a while back - am leaning more towards that
> position myself right now.
>
> Then again, the other option is part of why I see Pynchon as a
> quintessentially American writer - M&D's America, Doc's America,
> COL49's America is not Shangri-La or Vheissu or the Hollow Earth.
> There is some speck of hopefulness, though not optimism, which is
> rather different.
>
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Carvill, John  
> <john.carvill at sap.com> wrote:
>>> Vineland doesn't really offer a Great Lost Place
>>
>> Maybe Vineland *is* the Great Lost Place...
>>
>>
>>