Back to AtD. Back to Frank,

[rich]

you miss the fact that the frank chapters are some of the dullest
things Pynchon has written.

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:06 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> This chapter is typical of P's lifting of history; we can certainly
> identify the author's norms here, his political and historical point
> of view is evident; this is especicially the case in the phrase "some
> urban professionals' fanasy of liberal democracy" as this phrase
> evokes, from P readers, a sardonic wit that is the author's style when
> he provides commentary, and is  fundamentally Marxists to left-wing
> Anarchist in view, that is, his take on the historical events lifted
> from the pages of history, briefly sketeched, are sifted through P's
> critical sieve to expose the norms he proejects and evokes throught
> the novel, and these are consistant with the argument that P adopts
> after GR, as he turns his attention more and more to the stuggle of
> workers, to labor, and argues that a liberal democracy can not succeed
> under capitalism because  capitalism is class-based and therefore can
> never be democratic or even participatory.
>
> These are the politics of P. Not difficult to find. His norms are
> there in the commentary, in his selections of historical events, and,
> yes, even in his characters, in this case, Frank, who, though a pawn
> on P's chessboard, is moved on and in the squares of history.
>
> Of course, Pynchon is not commenting on Ahab, or Pyncheon, but the
> tale of land taken, haunted by the ghosts of the oppressed and
> murdered is more than mere allusion or favorable parody, but directs
> us to land issues that saturate, still, the geo-political conficts
> from Mexico to Brazil, and, of course, back to the States, and the
> lines, signaled up, and cut into the Earth...and so on.