the Merle center

[Bled Welder]

Interesting you mention Chomsky, oh god, here we go.  How many times over the decades has some nerd on here like me taken a Chomsky mention and run with it like a bat outta hell--
You can't mention Klein and Chomsky in the same sentence, it's not fair to Klein.  It's like comparing Franzen to Pynchon.  When Chomsky unleashes his entire arsenal on a more than everyday sorta Slothropish sorta reader (a stab in the mostly dark there), with the extreme, sometimes incomprensible degree of wicked sarcasm his text reaches a level of transcendence, why not.  But I do like to keep an eye on Zmag, bop in now and then, see what the unrelenting are up to these days, besides getting older.  Not much.  Apparently Michael Albert still sincerely believes in Parecon.  And Chomsky just did a three hour interview with Brian from C-Span.
And Chomsky only deals with facts!  Let's hope Pynchon hasn't gotten to that point, although that's what I'm agreeing with, that that's the vibe I'm getting from AtD.  Relaying, translating the information, not rewriting it.  And I'm told today that there's no conclusion to AtD?  Why not?  Why not have the anarchico-syndicalists, or another stab, the counterforce? end up winning?  A man of infinite imagination, refuses the reader a simple win like that, at the end of it all?
As Dim would have said, "apopoliwogies" for the following long quote, from a casual Chomsky talk in 1989, this sort of thing never really gets tiring to hear I don't think:
"I would hazard a guess that the "Propaganda Model" is one of the best confirmed theses in the social sciences.  There has been no serious counter-discussion of it at all, actually, that I'm aware of.  But that's all irrelevant within the mainstream culture--and the point is, it will all stay irrelevant, even if the level of proof were ever to reach way beyond what could ever be achieved in the social sciences.  In fact, even if you could prove it at the level of physics, it would always remain irrelevant--and in fact, not even be understandable within the elite culture--no matter how well it's proven.  And that's because what it reveals undermines very effective and useful ideological institutions, so it's dysfunctional to them, and will be excluded."



Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:47:00 -0500
Subject: Re: the Merle center
From: richard.romeo at gmail.com
To: hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi
CC: pynchon-l at waste.org

there is alot to like in AtD--the Vormance Expeditions, the sheer beauty of some of the natural descriptions, I really like the Chums but so much of the dialogue-driven bits (and there's alot of them) are much to what's the word "cute", "unconvincing", that know-it-all TV'ness that passes for wordplay.  and not to belabor the point but his villains are way too cartoonish. it's like listening to naomi klein or chomsky drone on and on. i dont necessarily disagree with whats being said but this is supposed to be interesting not something I got to for reassurance of my beliefs. none of the traverse are convincing--frank is bland, reef is annoying, and the other kid is into math (nuff said). the women are all spunky survivors, no one really suffers much, in the end who really cares about any of them. not me. 




On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:



On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, barbie gaze wrote:



> The reality and fictionality of characters is an essential concern of all

> Pynchon works. I'm a bit surprized to read that P-List readers of Pynchon's

> works find fault with the massive AGtD on the grounds that it has no

> central character or consciousness or whatever. Pynchon has, as Paul noted,

> improved his writing over the years; he is a better writer in AGtD than in

> GR or M&D  (I won't include V. because it is his first novel and he is not

> yet a mature and great writer early on, and I'll skip over the California

> series because these are not serious efforts), but he has alos improved his

> story-telling and his characterizations.





Hmm, perhaps the basic reason why AtD doesn't work for me is that I find

it lackadaisical. It's as if it tries to actualize "weak interaction" or

some such in both its story-telling and characterizations, and it may well

succeed in that. I, nostalgic, miss GR's intersubjective magnetisms and

gravities. And besides gravity, GR has gravity-fighting lightness that in

my view is not to be confused with AtD's overall feebleness. These

qualities I see in GR also make its narrative and characterizations work

for me much better than those of AtD. But maybe I really should reread AtD.





Heikki


 		 	   		  
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