The Work of Conspiracy Theory

[alice malice]

When did P not "take on" conspiracy theorists and paranoid thinking?
When was conspiracy, paranoia (positive and negative), anti-paranoia,
not a major theme? He's been doing from the start. But what does it
mean when one says that P "takes on" a subject? Takes it on
thematically?


Is P a satirist and a moralist?

If he is, we might identify the targets of his satire and we might
even identify his moral stance.

Is his moral stance opposed to the "conspiracy stance"?

If P is a satirist and moralist, is he also an equal opportunity
moralist and satirist? Are all sins and sinners created equal? Or are
there kinds and degrees? Is an anarchist bomber good? Not evil? How
about a Capitalist Plute? How about a regular guy who withdraws,
collects a government check, does odd jobs, smokes dope, watches the
Tube, likes jail bait? How about a guy who makes a fortune trading
commodites?

If everyone is satirized by P, are some people of power guilty of
great mortal sins against the world and do they therefore deserve, and
do they receive, a deeper and darker place in P's Hell?

Kurt Mondaugen (V.), Major Duane Marvy (GR), Brock Vond (VL)...prove
that Pynchon often condemns minor players in the world of sin to the
bottomless perdition after cutting off their comprehension, their
balls, their funding.

So, to argue that Pynchon is some kind of postmodern Dante is silly.
Dante doesn't put people like Marvy in Hell. And in Dante, it's never
some arbitrary adjustment in funding, or something in the wind, or
even anything karmic that puts people in Hell or brings them down.
dante, as Pynchon suggests in his parody of Dante's satirical abuses
of his enemies, is a hypocrite, a angry man, who, even as one who can
visit and escape Hell, finds impossible to distance himself from the
sins describes and the people he condemns there. At times, in Pynchon
narratives, we see the turning of the page, the mask slides, the
self-deprecating humor, the self-consciousness points a finger, or
gives one, to the author in the mirror.

But what of those conspiracy theorists? Their plots, their plottings
compete. Compete with the official narratives, the grand ones, the
media...ect. and with other plots and conspiracies, and even with the
author's narrative plottings.

The idea of a plotting, of narrative construction, of story telling,
is Pynchon's target. How we tell tales and why.

There is nothing postmodern or novel about this. Students of
narrative, stories, of tale telling, be these stories or tales spun
yarns to entertain or teach or past them time, know that nesting a
tale in a tale, in a competition of narratives, be these 1001 Nights
or Canterbury Tales, or the wicked webs of witches who may be only
hysterical girls.

Has the media or the official story or the grand narratives any claim
to the Truth than formulators of fictions forever fumbling the ball of
facts?

Of course not.

We can't help it. We can't help but plot. We make connections. That's
how we read and read into and make sense of our experiences, but we
all know by now, and we don't need P to remind us of this, that we've
learned way too much, and yet, we've learned nothing at all. But these
extremes are hard to live with. So we bounce between them, where
conspiracy, and plot making keeps us in the middle with the rest of
the preterit, excluded from knowing what must remain a mystery.

Of course, as Pynchon reminds us, mystery is where Grace does her
work. And, as we all know by now: Itz about the Work we do, or fail to
do.


And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l