Occupying Anarchism

[Ian Livingston]

Really, though, laissez-faire capitalists are anarchists. The problem, you
see, is, as Conrad might agree, that the hard heart and the soft abide
together in tempestuous soul of man.

On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 6:13 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I like ian's riposte to joe, even if joe knew all Ian and you say.
> He, perhaps becasue of his hard-won life and talent, was a "conservative'
> about
> the established order he left Poland to succeed in.............
>
> His view of anarchy was of the observing as news and judging kind, I
> daresay.
>
>   *From:* alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> *To:* pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Saturday, July 28, 2012 8:49 PM
> *Subject:* Re: Occupying Anarchism
>
> And Conrad would ask you to read any of his stories and after doing so
> it would be clear that the suffering of the heart is common to
> capitalists and anarchists; and this is the theme of his works; we see
> that the anarchist and the capitalist, the white man, wise man, and
> the workers he exploits, even enslaves, suffer, for they are secret
> sharers or doubles. seems nothing all that novel in Pynchon, that
> double vision, an historical and not a-historical double-bind is a
> kind of mirror held up, as Conrad would have it, to the sea of
> troubles, or as Hamlet would, to the Nature of man. Although, as the
> fool and the clown who digs his grave, or digs up his skull as he digs
> a grave he lies in, is a labor lost on Hamlet.
>
> On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 7:25 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > To Conrad I would reply, "Capitalists truly are hard of heart, clever,
> and
> > think themselves smart."
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 2:38 PM, alice wellintown
> > <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> The story, as Conrad tells it, deals with corporate advetisments, for
> >> meat products, a penal colony for cattle and men. Our narrator is a
> >> hunter of the rare and beautiful butterfly not named or desribed. The
> >> butterfly. Reminds me that not a few authors have used the butterfly
> >> as symbol. Conrad uses it again and again. Here, in the anarchist, the
> >> story he calls, not an ironic tale, the subtitle he saves for The
> >> Informer, but a desperate tale, the insect, like the critique of
> >> adertisment, is quickly abandoned as frame narrative distraction that
> >> permits authorial commentary on the narrator and his
> >> self-consciousness, his rejection of gulability and his independence
> >> from the corporate scheme, though all rather ironic as he is an
> >> unreliable narrator who quickly establishes the apparent truth of his
> >> tale, as Conrad often does, by telling it as it was heard by a
> >> desperate man whose tale telling has no motive other than to expose a
> >> desperate man who must remain desperate.
> >>
> >> Papillion, a true story novel, like Shantaran, is much the same; how
> >> the worm takes flight with a tale.
> >>
> >> Conrad sez, of anarchists, they are soft of heart and not so smart.
> >> Sounds about right. Anarchism can never rid itself of the obvious,
> >> what gave it a rebel, as Camus might call him.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
> creeds
> > the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
> reason
> > is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping
> for
> > the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in
> the
> > streets." -- Will Durant
>
>
>


-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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