What to make of TRP's conspiracies

[Monte Davis]

David, Joseph: Forget the theory for the moment: is it fair to say that all
the novels all raise the possibility of persons or organizations -- usually
sinister  -- *shaping* history behind the scenes? (V. is the weakest case,
as the Vs seem more emblems of a dehumanization or "automaticity" out of
Adams than puppet masters or representatives of same.)

By "MacGuffin" I meant that the questions in the summary frame, explicitly
or implicitly, the central characters' quests / detective stories /
explorations / adventures / wanderings -- protagonists are always asking
themselves "plot or paranoia?" -- but that stable answers are (1) not
provided, (2) not possible, and (3) not the point.

I did *not* mean to sound dismissive of the questions or the quests. I
enthusiastically subscribe to David's description of them as "launch pads
to bigger realms." We are meant to care very much what shapes history, and
why so many bright possibilities have turned to dark outcomes.



On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 6:26 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> I understand Monte's schema, and I largely agree. But *MacGuffin* is too
> strong a dismissal. Those themes are launch pads to bigger realms, not
> things to be dismissed as excuses for other concerns.
>
>
> On Sunday, March 9, 2014, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> While outlining some form of the conspiracies or conspiracy theories that
>> function as plot devices, IMO they are framed to be over literalistic and
>> to focus on an easily dismissed version/interpretation of the historical
>> references.  Still, with a little tweaking to be somewhat less loaded
>> toward your MacGuffin theory, I think they form the basis of potentially
>> worthwhile discussion.
>>
>>
>> On Mar 9, 2014, at 12:05 PM, Monte Davis wrote:
>>
>> > I meant that as on offlist message to John Krafft, to elicit his
>> comments before a revision and P-list posting, but WTF: there are no
>> accidents, right?
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > John: I don't know if you've followed any of the Project Paperclip
>> thread on the P-list,  but it got me thinking about all the conspiracies in
>> all the books. Below is a rough-draft, outrageously simplified rundown of
>> what I see as the "conspiratorial" questions posed by the novels.
>> >
>> > Now... I happen to believe that they are, in fact, the MacGuffins of
>> the novels; that Pynchon is less likely to be telling us "Beware
>> conspiracies" than "Beware our penchant for projecting (and blaming)
>> conspiracies." But that's for later. What I'm asking now is: do these
>> strike you as reasonable distillations? Any reactions, corrections,
>> suggestions much appreciated.
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> > V: Henry Adams worried about the headlong dynamism of history,
>> gathering speed via technology towards the end of the 19th century. Has
>> that destructive energy "come alive": taken substance in V., a woman (or
>> feminine principle) who appears at critical moments from the 1890s to the
>> 1950s as Victoria Wren, Veronica the rat, Venus/Vheissu, Vera Meroving, the
>> feminized city of Valletta, and Veronica Manganese?
>> >
>> > CoL49: Is every kind of communication in 1960s America compromised --
>> blocked, distorted, turned into entropic noise -- by a secret,
>> centuries-old struggle between the Trystero and "official" channels?
>> >
>> > GR: Were the "political" WWII -- and implicitly, the Cold War and
>> nuclear arms/missile race -- just covers for rearrangements of power within
>> a single global Force, most clearly seen in multinational corporations in
>> oil, synthetic chemistry, and other industrial technologies?
>> >
>> > Vineland: In the 1960s, activists campaigned against the war in
>> Vietnam, and the government took secret steps to infiltrate and suppress
>> their groups. By 1984, has that grown into a full-scale fascist apparatus,
>> ready to impose (or unveil) a police state, target and round up even former
>> activists who've taken refuge in the woods?
>> >
>> > Mason & Dixon: Were all hopes for a fresh start in the New World doomed
>> by the "bad habits" -- slavery, land-grabbing, imperial/colonial power
>> games -- brought or copied from the Old World? e.g., did simply measuring
>> and mapping a magical wilderness along the Mason-Dixon line carry the seeds
>> of the Civil War schism along that line? How much was that fostered by
>> secret schemes of small groups: the Royal Society, Dutch East India
>> Company, Jesuits, Sons of Liberty et al?
>> >
>> > Against the Day: At the turn of the 20th century, were all the
>> possibilities and energy of new politics (anarchism, organized labor), new
>> ideas (in art, science, mathematics) and new technology (photography,
>> electricity, aviation, movies) foreclosed by industrial plutocracy and by
>> preparations for WWI? Were the Chums of Chance, living out a dozen genres
>> of pop fiction, "above" all that -- or serving an unnamed power that was
>> bringing all that about?
>> >
>> > Inherent Vice: Behind the noir + Cheech & Chong mashup, one question
>> about the end of the 1960s: "Was it possible, that at every gathering --
>> concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, and freak-in, here, up north, back
>> East, wherever--those dark crews had been busy all along, reclaiming the
>> music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday,
>> all they could sweep up, for the ancient forces of greed and fear?"
>> >
>> > Bleeding Edge: Information technology and the Internet serve both
>> centralizing organization and decentralizing, community-building
>> creativity. DeepArcher -- an anonymous, potentially utopian virtual world
>> -- is created, then corrupted and "colonized," just before and after the
>> blowback catastrophe of 9/11, when the "freedom fighters" the US had
>> fostered in Afghanistan in the 1980s returned as Al Qaeda "terrorists" (or
>> so we're told). Is that coincidence -- or were a few schemers such as Ice
>> and Windust instrumental in both?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
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