NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance?

[Monte Davis]

And the NTA was just one of a whole Friendly Family of Portals to Modernity. Compared to some, the Kirghiz had it easy:

“When they came to Central Asia, the Dungans were mostly illiterate peasants from northwest China who spoke a series of topolects from Shaanxi, Gansu, and other areas.  From 1927 to 1928, they wrote  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungan_language> their language with the Arabic alphabet, and from 1928-1932 they used the Latin alphabet.  In 1952-53, the Soviet government created for the Dungans a  <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/dungan.htm> writing system based on the Cyrillic alphabet, which they continue to use till today…”

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4578#more-4578

 

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of kelber at mindspring.com
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2013 8:33 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance?

 

This passage from GR (the whole NTA/Kirghiz Light sequence, in fact) seems relevant:

 

"On sidewalks and walls the very first printed slogans start to show up, the first Central Asian fuck you signs, the first kill-the-police-commissioner signs

(and someone does!this alphabet is really something!) and so the magic that the shamans, out in the wind, have always known, begins to operate now in

a political way, and Dzaqyp Qulan hears the ghost of his own lynched father with a scratchy pen in the night, practicing As and Bs ..."

 

Pynchon, like a good political progressive, is romanticizing that "purer fundamentalist past" here, but isn't that what terrorists and religious fundamentalists do? Which speaks to me of an unpleasant truth: there are two forces at war today. In one corner, the Globocracy, buying up national governments, judicial systems and economies at bargain basement prices, in the mad quest for profits. Things they like: no pesky government spending (what a waste of money!), tax havens, agribusiness, Frankenfoods, immigration (cheap labor!), high-priced medical care, stem cell research ( a biomedical goldmine), war (oh, the profits, the profits!), sex (it sells!), "liberated" professional women, divorce, abortion, and gay marriage (helps sell more high-end real estate and appliances, while cutting down on that societal drain: single moms with too many children).

 

On the other side, all those who hate the Globocracy: political progressives (who can get confused, because they're fighting against people who support many of the progressive issues they feel most passionate about), environmentalists, supporters of human rights, pacifists, humanists, Christian wingnuts, fascists, rightwing nationalists, Muslim fundamentalists, Orthodox Jews, and racists and hate-mongerers of all stripes. Much as I loathe who's lumped into this side, it's the side I most support. It's clearly the losing side. Pynchon, with his romanticizing of indigenous cultures, his disgust at colonialism, clearly falls into this side.

 

Laura

 

 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mark Kohut 
Sent: Apr 20, 2013 3:54 PM 
To: pynchon -l 
Subject: NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance? 




This is Adam Gopnick in The New Yorker today about the marathon bombers. Does this apply to any of P's characters in AtD? 

Does this apply to P's vision? Is Hume's condemning what she sees as P's moral failure in Against the Day, refuted, or attempted

to be seen (refuted) by P's vision of the cohesion of life in the Olde Europe scenes---the communities of the villages? 

 

" But all of our experience suggests that it is not “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists."

 

Or, a few have remarked that DeLillo best captured the meanings and understandings of the characters in our recent acts of local terror. True, where?

You can answer this question instead.

 

Extra credit for both. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130421/c110dce4/attachment.html>