TRTR: Racking my brain over The Rackignitons....

[Paul Mackin]

On 6/21/2011 2:16 PM, cfabel wrote:
> Perhaps implicit is the oppositional conceptualization of "political
> reality;" the politics, on the one hand, of the universal, the necessary,
> the essential, the cultural, in opposition to the politics of the
> contextual, the contingent, the ambiguous, and the artistic?

Politics is certainly concerned with the oppositional--conflicting 
interrelationships between various groups in society.  P-listers would 
tend to define a political novel as one having this focus.
> The conservative promises to copy the original by engaging some process of
> recovery in opposition to the sincerely creative (enhancing?). The copy
> promised emphasizing strongly the invisible artist(s) of our (political)
> culture, the ghost(s).

The desire for original intent, the catch being that a lot of times 
there was no relevant original intent, conditions impossible to predict 
having arisen.

> C. F. Abel
> Chair
> Department of Government
> Stephen F. Austin State University
> Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
> (936) 468-3903
>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org  [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
> Of Paul Mackin
> Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 11:02 AM
> To: Mark Kohut;pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: TRTR: Racking my brain over The Rackignitons....
>
> On 6/21/2011 10:51 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> Where do some thoughts come from,  I ask myself, in ways that won't
>> much interest you plisters?
>>
>> But, last evening I was ill, chills and fever and waking up often and
>> once when I did I had this thought:
>> Do you know what isn't in The Recogntions, given its time frame?
>>
>> McCarthyism.
>>
>> Pervades TRP; compare and contrast.
>>
> The Recognitions took place in the late forties to early to middle 50s,
> which was certainly the McCarthy era.
>
> However the milieu of R was pretty much intellectual and cultural allusion,
> almost to the point of exhaustion. Not much room for a low brow like
> McCarthy.
>
> McCarthy played the ignoramus and appealed to the ill informed.  To the
> extent there ever was a Communist threat McCarthy was totally ineffective in
> thwarting it. His lists were a hoax. He was pure demagogue.  Nixon at least
> got Hiss.
>
> None of this is to imply that McCarthyism wasn't a very sinister force of
> the era. Just a different type of sinister from the one Gaddis was
> interested in.
>
> I've dashed this off without much thought and am probably overlooking
> something but what the heck.
>
> P
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