Pynchon commentary, like pizza and sex...

[Mark Kohut]

Terrif reading and 'annotation' of anarchism in Cof Lot49, imho.
 
I will only add this. Do we all remember the phrase "after the revolution"---, then there will be......whatever" ? I remember 
thinkers pointing out that whatever protesting for change led to, it still had to be 'lived" out....
 
Foundational conjunction with theoretical anarchism: dancing the perpetual revolution [Trotsky, I think] IS the change...
 
P.S. Another writer who believed in theoretical 'anarchism', when challenged by skeptics about how necessary 'work'
would get done in a society---"Who would pick up the garbage?", someone asked. 
 
"The garbagemen", he answered...open-ended ironies in play.....
 
 

From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 5:27 AM
Subject: Pynchon commentary, like pizza and sex...

...even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.  That is to say, poke
around a little bit and it's hard not to find something of interest.

In that spirit, I'd like to address the anarchist in CoL49.
according to Google preview, the word "anarchist" appears on 3 different pages.

A pair of mentions on 97 - where they're conversing and Jesus Arrabal
uses the word twice ("...anarchists believe in another world.  Where
revolutions break out spontaneous and leaderless....An anarchist
miracle.  Like your friend.  He is too exactly and without flaw the
thing we fight")


a pair on 73 - Oedipa is in the nursing home with the old dude talking
about dandelion wine, and he brings up the Porky Pig anarchist
cartoon.  This may be a foreshadowing type of scenario...
...proposing anarchism as the affiliation of the
falsely-flagged-as-Native-American murderer of the Pony express rider
...in general, posing "anarchist" as the answer to expectations for
some kind of "Other" to the Trystero she's finding everywhere?
...or is his CIA actually supposed to be part of the Trystero?  Oedipa
becomes rather confused about who's who, not to mention who's behind
it, or whether there's anybody that isn't part of it...I can't keep
track, myself, either...he does receive mail with the post-horn
symbol, but the mute isn't specifically mentioned (is it? I just have
snippet view right now)


and a singleton on 107 -- the setting for the phrase "anarchist
miracle" used to describe the hearing-impaired dancers is, to venture
toward close reading, as follows:
      Oedipa remembers that phrase from Arrabal's use of it
      - his use of it was specifically to describe the outbreak of revolution
      - her use of it (and this is a new idea to me) conflates
revolution with dancing -- as Pynchon also does (rioters exhibit a
"balletic quality") in the Watts essay!


overtones of Arrabal -
arable, like arable land
"a rabble", also - backwards - "labarra" (laborer)


Arrabal's organization was
"about the time of" Flores Magon
and "briefly allied with" Zapata, right?  so, the references impart a
flavor but don't provide enough data points to triangulate the
movement

(present-day Magonist collective :
http://colectivoautonomomagonista.blogspot.com/)

For Arrabal's CIA, the presence of a defined enemy such as Inverarity
is a miracle because so great a proportion of people (99% or more?)
find him offensive --- there used to be a cartoon that would show a
character with little beads of steam his or her neck, along with the
words "urge to kill" and maybe an arrow pointed at the inspirer of
that urge...

Although Arrabal hates the Church, the presence of Pierce or those
like him suffices his CIA as cause for what the Church describes as a
"just war"  ...
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