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

[Mark Kohut]

yeah, paul, true but I wondered why it is not even mentioned since 
anti-Americanness
as a charge ought to be in play with some of those intellectuals....

i like cfabel's remarks on the politics of the essential, the necessary, since I 
guess one
of gaddis key metaphors is the universality of cultural truths what with that 
golden bough
stuff and all......

But, still          

And later in the book I learn of lots of betrayals of former freinds......a key 
deep McCarthy trope maybe? 




----- Original Message ----
From: cfabel <cfabel at sfasu.edu>
To: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>; Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; 
pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, June 21, 2011 2:16:28 PM
Subject: RE: TRTR: Racking my brain over The Rackignitons....

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? 

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). 

C. F. Abel
Chair
Department of Government
Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas 75962
(936) 468-3903




-----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