V---2nd, Epilogue, spying in

[Mark Kohut]

nice fleshing, imho...

betrayal----see Vineland
loyalty  ---- all over
observation, diligence, caution ALL for ratting on another human being....

TRP sees it [spying] as paradigmatic of the modern age, I'd argue.....
Certainly of Courts broadly understood...(Rulers, Governments, etc.)

We know TRP seemed to greatly like Measure for Measure, taking a line
from it for one of his stories,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

A play in which the way the Duke 'tests' a substitute leader by spying
on everyone in Venice, his Dukedom, in disguise still warrants major 
disagreements and discussions
400 years on.............






----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thu, March 10, 2011 5:28:39 PM
Subject: Re: V---2nd, Epilogue, spying in

the spy!  a fertile notion...

because, of course, it involves so many human capabilities
- observation, diligence, caution
- it calls into question the idea of loyalty
- it gives so many opportunities for betrayal
- it claims to excuse so much bad behavior
- it makes, even more than politics, strange bedfellows

and as you say, it introduces an element of "strangeness" to the social fabric

(all kinds of strangenesses befall a group cohering toward a goal with
a spy in its midst - Judas amongst the disciples - provocateurs in a
peaceful demonstration, "FBI guys saying 'let's you and him fight'",
COINTELPRO, Lumumba getting assassinated, Malcolm X, MLK, JFK, RFK
getting picked off...Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA toppling Mossadegh,
Nixon's plumbers, Dick Tuck's dirty tricks, the October surprise,
Iran-Contra, CIA's "family jewels"...)

(I was looking at a PK Dick book where he divides the people into
"secret-bearers" and "task-fulfillers"...using abbreviations of the
German terms...can't remember the book right now... - but if there is
spying, then there are circles of knowing which only partially
coincide with other hierarchies or classification schemes)

Stencil pere, on a diplomatic mission, presumably represents the
interests of his government and the values of his society

which overtly would seem to entail meeting with his opposite numbers
in foreign diplomatic corps, helping British citizens abroad and so
forth

but also seems to require him getting involved with priests, art
thieves, all sorts of interesting people, and trying to cleave to a
course of action that will advance the cause he works for, the society
he represents, the people who sign his checks



and while I agree with you, Mark, that Pynchon, like any right-minded
individual, deplores the abuses, perhaps the "grace" referred to in
AtD of seeing things simply as they are, involves finding a way to
creatively envision the possibilities for an ethical person in a world
that contains these things?
That he isn't so much rejecting modernity, but looking at it warts and all.


On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:31 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There are still a lot of thing sto talk about in the epilogue if we want
> but I am gonna focus on one thing here.
>
> Spying. This lifelong theme in TRP's work gets its first workout here.
> This reading, after AtD, I am now reminded of the Vienna section of that work
> wherein spying as Bad Shit is also sourced.
>
> Spying: surreptitously learning and passing on to Authorities the personal,
> private, naturally-lived life of others. Authority = the State.
>
> I am also reminded that TRP name-checks Le Carre in the intro to 1984, right?
>
> Some say---I am one---that underneath all of TRP's oftentimes savage
> satirization
> of the age, of the West, of the History of the West he believes-- as a lost
> vision-- in regular folk
> living straightforward lives with neighbors and family in village-sized
> communities
>
> then spying on one's citizen-neighbors is the start of violating that
> life......see 1984, that novel he loves.
>
> TRP notices and sez this in the Epilogue:
> 'A spy is at home nowhere".
>
> The spy as the real ( and symbolic)  embodiment of deracination, that
> essential condition of modernity, most say. TRP = anti-modernity [AtD most]
>
> Spying enabled modernity, so to speak...
>
>
>
>



-- 
"The general agreement is that language should be a kind of honey.  I
like it to be a kind of speed." - Michael Moorcock