Why Windust & Maxine?

[Fiona Shnapple]

I agree that my sketch is far too simplistic. And, as I noted, I don't
want to make too much of the Pynchon 1984 essay, but it is worth
reading after BE.
Sure, P points out how Orwell's fiction, and even his essays, were
often, though seemingly prophetic, often far too simplistic. P notes
that at one point Orwell took seriously a particular view of history,
applied it universally, then, later, revised his reading of history.
In any event, Orwell's fictions, sometimes far too simple, fables
even, are important to P. There are no Proles that wake up and start a
revolution in 1984. There are no children who are not members of the
Thought Police in the outer Party housing complex where Winston lives.
A Horse is a Horse and a Pig is a Pig. Though there are some dynamic
and rounded characters, most are types, flat and static. Winston and
Julia are exceptions, not that they undermine the Universal Themes. So
we get into metaphysical questions. Old ones about Universals and
Particulars. Ontologies and Epistemologies. Not simple at all. In
fact, that is what is at stake in P novels: how who we work for may
determine what is real.


How the universals, as you say, break down, and why--do they break
down in Pynchon's fictions from the same cause or causes that break
them down in the world? And how do we distinguish the particulars from
the universals? The fictional from the real? These are, as I noted in
my post, the ancient metaphysical questions that Pynchon's fictions
ask us to consider.  There are no answers given. Though a politics of
withdrawal, to family, and to a Grace through forgiveness, an embrace
of mystery, of the life forces of a dialectical subterranean, or
materialist metaphysics provides, if not a way out (Brown), a way to
live in the shit, in the low life world of meatspace, in the waste
that is tossed away and passed over, to Educate our Adams out of Sloth
while accepting the Grace, that is Earth's freely given scatterbrained
Pear Tree blossoms strewn in the gutter.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l