Chabon on BE

[Monte Davis]

Chabon is careless there. Ernie's capsule history is not *historically*
baseless: yes, DARPA did fund some of the IT research leading to TCP/IP and
packet switching. And yes, the Cold War justification for that funding *was*
to develop a network technology that could "work around" servers knocked out
by enemy attack, so that government could keep communicating.

But given that the referents for Chabon's "weak sauce" are conspiracy
theories -- "advance warnings given to Jewish brokers or Muslim cabbies by
Mossad or al-Qaeda, suspicious groups of men seen on rooftops before or
after the attack, the purported destruction of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 by a
shoulder-mounted Stinger missile, unusual trading in the stock of American
and United Airlines in the days leading up to September 11" -- I'm guessing
that what he means is Ernie's implication that *because of those origins
decades ago*, it has always been Their tool, Their command-and-control
scheme. Never mind that it grew and diversified unthinkably beyond what
DARPA or its grantees envisioned in 1969. (Was Tim Berners-Lee working for
Them, too?). It was "conceived in sin," and Ernie is expressing scorn for
Maxine's belief that it could be beyond Their control, that it could ever be
anything *but* the bearer of "a bitter-cold death wish for the planet."

My reading is that by "baseless canard" Chabon means not Ernie's history,
but that "original sin" view of the Internet as a government conspiracy. I
readily agree that Pynchon weaves such views -- of inherent dark tendencies
in surveying and mapmaking, calculus and organic chemistry, electric grids
and thermodynamics -- into his "basic themes" throughout his books. But as
you might guess from  many previous discussions here,  I believe that what
he does with them is a lot more complex and interesting than endorsing them.
Does he want us to enter imaginatively into the minds and feelings of
characters who are drawn to them by temperament, and/or forced to them by
experience? For sure. Does he want us to "try on" multiple ways of reading
purpose -- or just sense -- into history? You bet.  That doesn't mean he
wants us to believe them.

(As for Chabon providing no examples of "the narrator making fun of crazy
old Marge": he doesn't mention Marge at all, let alone describe her thus. So
you're saying that if Chabon reads Marge as you assume on no evidence that
he does, and if Marge = Ernie, then Chabon would have adduced some other
point he doesn't make, so he must know he's on shaky ground. Have I got that
right?) 
     

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Thomas Eckhardt
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2013 4:47 PM
To: Charles Albert
Cc: Pynchon Liste
Subject: Re: Chabon on BE

Thanks, Charles.

Unfortunately I have not yet come around to read a novel by Chabon but I am
very fond of the movie version of "Wonder Boys". I also very much enjoyed
his take on Power Pop/Big Star (to be found here: 
http://michaelchabon.com/uncollected/musical/tragic-magic/).

I also found his review of BE perceptive in many ways (his take on Pynchon's
so-called flat characters, as Monte Davis said, is particularly good)
Nevetheless, I think this --

'His scorn for all this weak sauce is most sharply evident when it dribbles
from the lips of an otherwise affectionately rendered old-lefty liberal New
Yorker who sententiously repeats a baseless canard:

You know where it all comes from, this online paradise of yours? It started
back during the Cold War, when the think tanks were full of geniuses
plotting nuclear scenarios. Attaché cases and horn-rims, every appearance of
scholarly sanity, going in to work every day to imagine all the ways the
world was going to end. Your Internet, back then the Defense Department
called it DARPAnet, the real original purpose was to assure survival of US
command and control after a nuclear exchange with the Soviets.'

-- is hopelessly wrong. DARPAnet and Continuity of Government are not
'baseless canards', and I do not believe the author (or the implied author,
if you are, as I am, a nitpicking narratologist) views them that way.

In fact, I believe that Marge (like Maxine's father later on) articulates
one of the basic themes of the novel: The continuity of, let us say,
unlawful actions (e.g. black ops in Central and South America, Iran-Contra,
MK-Ultra, the in itself as well as for the novel highly important
Inslaw/PROMIS scandal, which all are at least alluded to in
BE) of the US government from the cold war until today.

Referring to Chabon's Marge quote above: In the deep political background
here, as in "Vineland", the spectre of "Continuity of Government" raises its
ugly head. Peter Dale Scott has something to say about this with regard to
September 11: 
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3362

At the very least this provides some context for Marge's "weak sauce." 
And Chabon did not -- could not, I assume -- provide any passage where the
narrator is making fun of crazy old Marge.

Thomas

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