Back to AtD. Back to Frank,

[Mark Kohut]

Not knowing this essay, I would strongly agree, in general, to your analysis.
 
Labor: self-organizing cooperatives...as one anarchist strain? The t-shirt pile
and working story? The Chums?


----- Original Message -----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: 
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD. Back to Frank,

So, in reading Kathryn Hume's essay in the Corrupted Pilgrim's Guide,
I disagree that P's norms are not there in the earlier works, or that
only experts can find them. His themes and ideas, his politics and
religion, these  seem quite obvious enough, though, of course, not
exactly static, but still and deliberate from the start. That the
critical industry elected to ignore the politics of Pynchon, as was
argued here recently, is alo not the case, but surely the postmodern
stuff was the fad and other readings were, well....other reading.

That violence is advocated, and that AGTD is a departure from the
sympathetic comic treatment of violence gainst capitalism is, i think,
a misreading. So Che Guevara, his cult embraced by characters in VL,
who name a child for him, may give birth to the violence enthusiast,
I:2-4, who is named by his flower-children parents and the daisy chain
turns, turns, turns, there is a season, turn, turn, and a time to
turn...and they turn and are turned....and still at the picnic there
is much twisted and tangled in the past that belongs to the people.
But Pynchon does not make Che a model, a violent hero of anti-capital
and the like....but Paulo Freire might do, a Catholic raised educator,
maybe...one who argued that the oppressed are not violent but are
oppressed and may react with violence but would be better served with
love and dialogue.

So, if organized labor, the only force that can temper the excesses of
market capitalism is a floundering failure that steps on its own dick,
shoots itself in its left foot with its right hand, what is Pynchon
saying about labor? Paddy Logue? Them and Us?



> 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.