Thomas Pynchon Explained In GIFs Form

[Monte Davis]

I fully agree that "how exactly the spiritual and the polit-economical
dimension do interact" is mysterious: Pynchon writes often of moral
balancing, accounting, atonement, reparation, and justice in language that
is variously Christian (multiple flavors), Hindu/Buddhist karmic,
ecological, mathematical/scientific -- but the effect for me is almost
always aporetic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aporia), and I have no idea
whether he arrives there deliberately or faute de mieux.

BTW, a visiting Marxist economist would hardly be puzzled even by a Las
Vegas where only wholesome, legal entertainment is "produced" and
"consumed": Marx enjoyed London music halls himself, and  But
resort/vacation cities from Pompeii onward have always had a reputation as
places where you could find not only good clean fun, but also a bit of
economic or erotic wink-wink, nudge-nudge (if you know what I mean, eh?)
What makes Las Vegas special is that Nevada was sparsely populated and poor
enough, and LV's post-WWII boom and cash-flow fast enough, that organized
crime could penetrate its government and law enforcement from the ground
up, more thoroughly than it had in, say, Atlantic City or Brighton.

I also agree w/r/t  Pynchon not wanting "to become a mouthpiece of the
so-called Free World." In Anglo-American ideological rhetoric, where any
workers' organization at all was an "illegal combination" for much of the
19th century, "socialist" and then "Bolshevik" and "communist" were handy
sticks with which to beat even the mildest liberal reform -- just as
"fascist" would later become a loose, all-purpose condemnation from the
left (or even from today's Moscow, however you care to label *that*). I
don't fault Pynchon for rejecting and satirizing the former. I don't claim
he has any obligation in the name of "balance" or objectivity" to give
equal time to all horrors driven or justified by ideology. But I do think
it's significant that he writes so much more about the underdog left in
opposition than the revolutionary left in power. I do think it's
significant that so many of his alternatives -- his portrayals of
bottom-up, communitarian, non-power-addicted human relations -- are
explicitly transient, marginal, family- or village-scale, in remote/exotic
settings beyond imperial frontiers, other-worldly, and otherwise far from
(as he says so often in AtD) "the given day."


On Mon, 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 with
> each other, I don't have any idea at all. It's probably part of the magic
> that makes Pynchon a great author.
>
>
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