Inherent Vice: Groucho Marx & Mickey Wolfmann

[bandwraith at aol.com]

I agree that resisting death on an individual level
is futile, at least for the body, and that worshipping
it (making it the TELOS) on a social level is ultimately
anti-social, but it is a convenient common denominator,
and as such, will always find adherents. If we are to
de-fang death, at least as an organizing technique
of those in power, we must be willing to confront the
consequences on an individual level. That always begs
the question: What (who, where) is the individual level?
What is our nature- our common shared humanness-
and, what is its relationship to our own individual natures?

In that sense, doc is not just a psychedelic detective. He
is a private eye (except he's working for us) in search of
the psyche- a psychic detective. The soul, if there is one,
must be deeper than the paving stones. (Sorry if that spoils
a good "beach read.") Mickey's nature is presented early
on as possibly pleiotropic: a jew who wants to be a nazi.
Doc, in effect, is seeking to find Mickey's true nature.

Pynchon slyly does not specifically connect either of Mickey's
phenotypical behaviors (pleiomorphisms) with either his
jewishness or his coveted naziism. Which is responsible
for which? That is left up to the reader. The isolated desert
community- kibbutz-like, organized along shared values,
doomed- may stem from either aspect of Mickey's nature,
or perhaps both. The same is true for his Channel View
Estates "concept". Although it is reflexively easy for the reader
to assume that "Arrepentimiento" is from the jewish side,
that would be an assumption on the reader's part.

I think it was Gershom Scholem who tipped off The West to
the problem that reincarnation (gilgul) represented for the
medieval kabbalists. If the soul migrates through various
incarnations, each of which can effect its nature, how does
this square with the notion that the soul has an individual
identity of its own? This was resolved, apparently, by
postulating the "tzelem"- an "astral body", or "image", which
does not experience transmigration, and thus, preserves
the individual identity of the soul, despite the apparent
irreconciliabilty of the "two-body" problem.

And, while I'm no expert on Kabbala, or Scholem, I think he
also discussed the reverse dilemma: two souls sharing the
same body. Either way, there is some evidence that he would
have been tickled by the use of the detective genre as a
literary means of examining the dilemma.

http://arsprosa.blogspot.com/2009/01/minor-and-anecdotal_18.html

For doc, then, the quest for the true nature of Mickey Wolfmann
is like a koan which cannot reasonably be answered linguis-
tically, or logically, without violating the law of the excluded
middle. That would be another compelling reason to use the
plot-driven sub-genre of the noir detective novel- a genre well
suited to the exposure of political truths conveniently left
concealed by more standard literary approaches.


-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 7:30 am
Subject: Re: Inherent Vice: Groucho Marx & Mickey Wolfmann


On 19.01.2011 16:59, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> Hobbes is a key, but from a modern perspective, so is Leo
> Strauss.

So called "negative anthropology" is indeed a strong tradition of
thought. See also Freud or - for that matter - Arnold Gehlen. When
Strauss writes about Hobbes: "But the most powerful of all passions
will
be a natural fact, and we are not to assume that there is a natural
support for justice or what is human in man" (from 'Natural Right and
History'), no one would deny that the fear of death is a major
motivation in people. Thing just is that (worldwide) justice is a
SOCIAL
project. If the fear of death would always have the last word, how
could
one, for example, explain the American revolution? Or the Paris Commune
of 1871? When Strauss writes: "[Avoided] Death takes the place of the
TELOS" (ebd.), this is an anthropological reductionism, which does,
imo,
not meet the social possibilities of mankind. If political cynicism à
la
Strauss is taking over completely, we all are actually doomed. Let me
tell you a story I recently read in a book by Badiou. One day, in the
late 1950s, he was walking in Paris with Sartre. And it was the time
the
Stalinist terror crimes were heavily debated, lots of people having had
lost faith in any kind of socialism usw. "Now", Sartre said, "however
tragic this all is, we have to go on trying to find a way to worldwide
justice. And THEY will not want to allow this. But if we do not even
try, we are in no way better than ants or termites ... Part of the
Darwinist struggle for life, survival of the fittest and all that
shit".
And that's why I'll always sympathize with freedom fighters who go up
against the Empire bzw. "the Great Game", as Pynchon calls it with
reference to Kipling in Against the Day. "You may say I'm a dreamer
...", yes, yes, but then again --- no: We don't have to seek
consolation
in naive Rousseauistic dreams, or idealize the Polynesian people like
Wilhelm Reich did. It's likely more promising to develop a
Left-Schmittesque concept of "the nomos of the earth", whereby 'nomos'
is for Schmitt the unity of order and regional place ("Einheit von
Ordnung und Ortung"). You could also say that for Carl Schmitt order
and
law can fruitfully only exist on a local basis ("Recht ist Recht am
rechten Ort allein"). As an Anarcho-Socialist I'd suggest: Not a
centralist hierarchic state, yet small heterarchic communities ...

Power to the People!

Kai