Thomas Pynchon Explained In GIFs Form

Mon May 12 06:58:51 CDT 2014

I think Pynchon clearly links the United States and Russia in lots of thematic ways in GR and, esp in AtD. 

Sent from my iPad

On May 12, 2014, at 6:51 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

> 
> In Inherent Vice there's a satirical passage  (p. 232): "When he got back, he flipped on the TV and watched Monkees reruns till the local news came on. The guest today was a visiting Marxist economist from one of the Warsaw Pact  nations, who appeared to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown. 'Las Vegas,' he tried to explain, 'it sits out there in the middle of the desert, produces no tangible goods, money flows in, money flows out, nothing is produced. This place should not, according to theory, even exist, let alone prosper as it does. I feel my whole life has been based on false premises. I have lost reality. Can you tell me, please, where is reality?' The interviewer looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject to Elvis Presley." I doubt that a Marxist economist would really be so overwhelmed by the facts of money laundry and organized crime. But that's not the point here. Thing is that Pynchon indeed avoids to "engage in any depth" with communisms. Why? I don't think that he's simply "not interested in this part of the world," an author with his encyclopedic spectrum of themes could not allow himself this. My guess is that Pynchon, who had been immediately involved into the Cold War during his Boeing years, didn't want to be part of it as a writer. So he focused on the American side and its entanglement  with the Third Reich, as it became manifest in Operation Paperclip.  Not just despite yet because of Pynchon's special affinity to paranoia no anti-Soviet motives can be found. He didn't want to become a mouthpiece of the so-called Free World. At least I like to think this.
> 
> That there are problems in Pynchon's universe that "lie deeper" than political economy seems obvious; maybe some of them can be explained through catholic (original sin) or gnostic (the fall) models,  - but how exactly the spiritual and the polit-economical dimension do interact with each other, I don't have any idea at all. It's probably part of the magic that makes Pynchon a great author.
> 
> 
> On 11.05.2014 01:00, Monte Davis wrote:
>> MN> either not interested in this part of the world or, in his system of the world, global problems he's dealing with, lie deeper than the "evil empire"...
>> 
>> I lean to the second (that "greed and fear" quotation). I've long thought that his unique version of original sin, Gnostic fall, capture by Maya, is prior to any political/ideological wrong paths. I also wonder if he might not feel some humility and tact in the face of the largest tragedies of that damned 20th century -- almost all of which are offstage, implied, glimpsed around corners. That certainly doesn't prevent him from conveying all the sorrow and pity of it I can handle.
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com <mailto:max.nemtsov at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>    this is what made me wonder, too. but then i found a sort of
>>    answer in V.
>> 
>>    "Not so. Because: all along the first thread, from a young, crude
>>    Mata Hari act in Egypt - as always, in no one's employ but her own
>>    - while Fashoda tossed sparks in search of a fuse; until 1913 when
>>    she knew she'd done all she could and so took time out for love -
>>    all that while, something monstrous had been building. Not the
>>    War, nor the socialist
>>    tide which brought us Soviet Russia. Those were symptoms, that's all."
>> 
>>    symptoms, that's all. he clearly is either not interested in this
>>    part of the world or, in his system of the world, global problems
>>    he's dealing with, lie deeper than the "evil empire" (this country
>>    turns back to now)
>> 
>>    imho, of course
>>    Mx
>> 
>> 
>>    On 10.05.2014 21:02, Monte Davis wrote:
>>>    I'm just finishing Against the Day again: recall that circa 1919
>>>    (p. 1024) we see "... the old /Bolshai’a Igra/... The Romanoff
>>>    crest had vanished from its envelope, which instead was now all a
>>>    single chaste expanse of saturated red, and the ship’s name had
>>>    been changed to /Pomne o Golodayushchiki. '/Remember the
>>>    Starving,' explained Captain Padzhitnoff...these days his ship
>>>    and crew flew everywhere across Europe and Inner Asia, no longer
>>>    dropping brickwork but sending food, clothing and— since a great
>>>    influenza epidemic the boys had not till now been aware of—
>>>    
>>>    medical supplies, gently down by parachute to whatever
>>>    populations below were in need of them.
>>>    "
>>> 
>>>    The Russian dirigible, while pointedly "red," is floating out of
>>>    the new government's control, just as the Inconvenience is
>>>    becoming independent of the shadowy (capitalist? imperialist?)
>>>    Chums of Chance headquarters. We have seen the tsarist state
>>>    almost entirely in terms of 1) Its "Great Games" in central Asia
>>>    and the Balkans, and (2) its barely acculturated Islamic and
>>>    shamanic reaches; we will see nothing of its successor. Similarly
>>>    in GR, we see the rocket-hunting great power game of the Zone and
>>>    the remote Kirghizhstan of the 1920s, but only glimpses of the
>>>    USSR of 1945.
>>> 
>>>    I'm not saying that either book conceals (let alone excuses or
>>>    favors) the authoritarian communism of the USSR, but it's not
>>>    unfair to say that it elides the matter compared to its treatment
>>>    of authoritarian forces in 20th-century Europe and the US. AtD
>>>    both celebrates anarchism and trade unionism and explicitly
>>>    foreshadows the death of the former in WWI: "Industrial
>>>    corporations, armies, navies, governments, all would go on as
>>>    before, if not more powerful. But in a general war among nations,
>>>    every small victory Anarchism has struggled to win so far would
>>>    simply turn to dust." (Ratty McHugh, p. 938)
>>> 
>>>    What Pynchon *doesn't* do is engage in any depth with the
>>>    theoretical communism of pre-1914, which coexisted and at times
>>>    overlapped with anarchism and the union movement, or with the
>>>    actuality of state communism after 1917. The latter managed to
>>>    co-opt enough of the workers' hopes and rhetoric of the earlier
>>>    period to seem a desirable alternative to many for decades to
>>>    come, although it was as top-down, controlling and brutal. That'
>>>    betrayal -- and reluctance to see it -- was long a sore spot for
>>>    the American left (which may be why Pynchon elides it), and an
>>>    all-too-easy avenue of attack for the American right.
>>> 
>>>    You mention the relation of "the intellectual lineage of fascism"
>>>    to "the project of objective scientific inquiry." In the spirit
>>>    of double refraction, we (if not Pynchon) we might also
>>>    contemplate the intellectual lineage of "scientific socialism,"
>>>    i.e. Marxist-Leninist claims of historical inevitability
>>>    (shepherded by a vanguard party elite, of course)... and decades
>>>    of prominent Soviet (and then Chinese) enthusiasm for  science,
>>>    heavy industry, vast infrastructure projects, collective farming,
>>>    etc. I think both have the same roots not only in the
>>>    Enlightenment, but also in the "ancient forces of greed and fear"
>>>    (IV 130) behind *all* ideologies of control and domination.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>    On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>    <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>        >> It would be fair to say, though, that Pynchon is obsessed
>>>        with the relationship between reason and authoritarianism,
>>>        and specifically with how the intellectual lineage of
>>>        fascism—both its roots in the Enlightenment, and the way it
>>>        informs present-day social and political structures—is
>>>        intimately related to the project of objective scientific
>>>        inquiry.<<
>>> 
>>>        This sums it up for me.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>        On 09.05.2014 21:23, Dave Monroe wrote:
>>> 
>>>            http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/gif-explainers-explained-in-thomas-pynchon-explained-1573696149
>>>            -
>>>            Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>        -
>>>        Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l