The Anonymous and TRP/: Max Weber

Wed Feb 9 09:36:43 CST 2011

For V. discussion, I would say yes, Benny is a schlemiel so Benny
can be Everyman......

Just a guy trying to find love & work in the Big City, learn the reaches of 
human responsibility
in an alien---mostly inanimate--world and make a life.....

----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; pynchon -l 
<pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, February 9, 2011 10:29:08 AM
Subject: Re: The Anonymous and TRP/: Max Weber

Very good Mark.  One might presume, for the sake of the V. discussion,
that being a schlemiel is a form of anonymity, and that bad luck - by
which the predictable or mechanical dimensions of the world break down
in some way - is preferable to charisma?

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Forgot this ending line:
>        I suggest that for Thomas Pynchon, to accept any public adulation, any
> award, any honor is by definition to be singled out--you have to read him to 
>get
> other resonances for this phrase as well--and would be the mirroring of 
>charisma
> and a deeply hypocritical act.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; pynchon -l
> <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, February 9, 2011 10:11:42 AM
> Subject: Re: The Anonymous and TRP/: Max Weber
>
> From an almost-published in a mainstream way, --still trying,-- longer essay 
on
> TRP and privacy.
>
>
> "his coherent, comprehensive vision of human beings in the modern world, 
>heavily
>
> formed by his earliest mature work. What part of what vision? Let's quote
> another near-contemporary of genius, Bob Dylan, from 1965's Subterranean
> Homesick Blues: "don't follow leaders/ watch the parking meters". "Watch the
> parking meters" might embody a metaphorical truth about the nineteen-sixties 
>and
>
> early seventies that is bandied about by those who know the early work best.
>        That was then, even the Bush surveillance years are gone, and through
> today Pynchon has turned down every request to accept an honor, to speak, to
> appear. Because "don't follow leaders" reverberates even deeper with Pynchon's
> vision. That line can bring Max Weber, the great sociologist, to mind, quoted 
>in
>
> and very influential for Gravity's Rainbow and still rippling through Against
> the Day. In Weber's famous essay "Politics as a Vocation", he touches bottom 
on
> how a 'leader' emerges out of any group of people: charisma does it. Charisma:
> being seen to be differently better--naturally exceptional. People recognize 
>the
>
> quality--and want to please whoever has it. A leader is a charismatic 
>individual
>
> who can command followers. To want followers, however-- like politicians and
> religious figures, which are Weber's examples---is where the truth of 'power
> corrupts' begins, Pynchon's whole oeuvre shouts. From Gravity's Rainbow: "One 
>of
>
> the dearest Postwar hopes: that there should be no room for a terrible disease
> like charisma." The villain in Vineland, is defined as charismatic. Contrast
> with a deliberately offhand image of a pile of T-shirts used by all in Against
> the Day or read the "anarchist miracle" dance scene in The Crying of Lot
> 49--some cures for charisma, so to speak, in Pynchon's world. Mr. Pynchon 
wants
> no followers of any kind and the deeper into him one reads, the more one can
> learn that follow oneself could be Pynchon's equivalent of Socrates' know
> thyself. "
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Wed, February 9, 2011 9:43:01 AM
> Subject: Re: The Anonymous and TRP/: Max Weber
>
>
> Max Weber's diagnosis of Occidental modernity Pynchon makes use of, especially
> in Gravity's Rainbow,
> is that of 'bureaucratic dominance' ("bürokratische Herrschaft") which is
> characterized by the
> "ROUTINIZATION of charisma". You know, organizations, science, the law,
> Pointsman ... It's true that,
> according to Weber, the system now and then needs a shot of temporary 
charisma,
> but the general
> tendency goes just the other direction ... RATIONALIZATION along the ways of
> capitalism (and please
> don't forget that Weber appreciated the work of Karl Marx very much!). Oh, and
> thanks for the hint, but alone in "Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft", Weber's opus
> magnum, there are literally dozens of pages dealing with the issue of
> 'charisma'. The general problem with charisma is, according to Weber, that
> charisma is 'alien to economy' ("wirtschaftsfremd"), and that's why it is 
>doomed
>
> to die in the modern
> world. At least in the long run ... "On this way from a stormy emotional life,
> alien to economy, to slow
> entropic death under the pressure of material interests is any charisma in any
> hour of its being, and  indeed, with every passing hour to a rising degree" 
>(Max
>
> Weber: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, p. 661,
> fünfte, revidierte Auflage, Tübingen 1980: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), edited 
>by
>
> Johannes Winckelmann;
> the translation is my own). Btw, with the sociology of the artist this has not
> that much to do.
>
> KFL
>
>
> On 09.02.2011 14:18, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>   and esp his anti-charisma rants--read
>> the definition of charisma from Weber: it means standing out publicly and
> using
>> THAT
>> ---which he will never do.
>
>
>
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-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty
of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.
    -- Hannah Arendt

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