Thomas Pynchon Explained In GIFs Form

[Mark Kohut]

I might love to argue that Pynchon's "unique vision of original sin,
Gnostic fall, capture by Maya" is caused more by History than
anything prior to it. So to speak.

On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> 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> 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> 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
>>
>>
>>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l