Bleeding etch and the shlong of shlongs which is Solo man's. LOVE and fascism

Sun Nov 16 05:51:44 CST 2014

And don't we know all of them after V. too, even Mason and Dixon and
Traverse and Vibe and Doc and Maxine and Reg? Sure we do. The anxiety
of work, of looking for it, finding it, doing it, un-doing it, failing
to do it...working on something that will work, for us, for Them, that
will matter, or at least give us meaning in the moment.

Can we see the smile on Camus's worker, who only roles a stone that
gathers being into nothingness?

So, RPM goes to the Cuckoo House and sets some crazy birds free, but
they are no longer men who work.

And the author of Sloth? He is often lazy and uninspired and must
wonder why we bother with his half-assed projects. Or even with the
work he should be proud of. Haven't we work of our own to get to?

That old guilt that religion still has a monopoly on.

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Molly Hite, I believe, is the one who said The Whole Sick Crew are
> barely caricatures; she knew them.
>
> On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 11:46 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If you've not read it, a very good essay is
>>
>>  "Fun Actually Was Becoming Quite Subversive":
>> Herbert Marcuse, the Yippies, and the Value System of Gravity's Rainbow
>> By Molly Hite
>>
>> In our current situation, the 1968 call for full unemployment seems
>> ironically prophetic, while Hoffman's announcement that "there was a
>> whole system of values that people were taught to postpone their
>> pleasure, to put all their money in the bank, to buy life insurance, a
>> whole bunch of things that didn't make any sense to our generation at
>> all" foreshadows all the aging baby boomers (and other U.S. citizens
>> as well) in unprecedented personal debt, without savings, many without
>> retirement benefits or health care. This fall from the ideal of a
>> benign technology enabling a benignly truncated but still nurturant
>> welfare state is one of the reasons new readers are increasingly
>> puzzled by the themes and even the narrative tones of Gravity's
>> Rainbow. Through most of its apocalyptic chronicle of the trajectory
>> of the V-2 Rocket--for Pynchon, the leading edge of Western
>> technological development--the novel still sustains an alternative
>> vision of technology as redemption, notably in its account of
>> Rocket-Manichaeans, "who see two Rockets, good and evil ... Enzian and
>> Blicero[:] a good Rocket to take us to the stars, an evil Rocket for
>> the World's suicide" (727).
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>>> Yes, Joseph -  very interesting!  I'm not a big Bible reader,  although thanks to my fundamentalist Lutheran background I'm relatively familiar with it.
>>>
>>> Song of Solomon is now used in weddings as a celebration of married love - flashbacks not a younger man -  but imo it's extremely ambiguous and can be read as an allegory if the reader wants that - not by me, though.
>>>
>>> Feminist or not,  I'd hesitate about jumping into the arms of some man who told me:
>>>
>>>  Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn,
>>>     coming up from the washing.
>>>
>>> Re TRP - I don't like holding any author to one overarching theme all his/her life or oeuvre.  It gives the reader little or no opportunity fully consider the changes of the author.  I think TRP has changed quite a lot between the times of his early stories and V  (women, apparently,  as the stuff of wet dreams and Playboy bunnies - early '60s)  to Bleeding Edge (3rd wave feminism - 21st century, 50 years later).  All of the material has to be read with the probability of satire and the easy possibility of irony - everywhere!
>>>
>>> Bekah
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Nov 14, 2014, at 9:29 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Interesting take, Joseph. I tended to take the more obvious pop-culture interpretation, but there's little point in taking an obvious approach to anything Pynchon writes. I've always had a mental block towards reading the Bible (except the OT, for boredom, once, during my cousin's unbearably long bar mitzvah). I have read the Song of Songs, and, frankly, I always favored the pop-culture (romantic poem) rather than metaphorical interpretation. But what the hell do I know? Your post is very thought-provoking. Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> Laura
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>>>> Sent: Nov 13, 2014 3:42 PM
>>>>> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>>> Subject: Bleeding etch and the shlong of shlongs which is Solo man's. LOVE and fascism
>>>>>
>>>>> The list has several times from different perspectives and with fierce intensity  approached the topic of a re-appearing trope/pattern/archetype. That pattern is the sexy, free, intelligent, feisty woman who is torn between  a man who is authoritarian, fascistic, sexually potent, police/military/ spy, agent of great powers in a great game on one hand; and on the other hand she is drawn to the lost puppy, happy go lucky or happy go luckless, just wants someone to love caring father type who seems to actually have found some of the liberty that everyone is fighting for.. It is in some sense the weak force magnetism ( and realness) of the regular dude versus the strong force magnetism of the power dude.
>>>>>
>>>>> The question of why Pynchon insists on working and re-working this pattern  despite the obvious way that it invites very reasonable feminist distaste and seems a bit worn has yielded some interesting conversations. I have argued it as a metaphor for who will win the heart of  'America' whoever or whatever the fuck that is. And thus the question of who or what is Pynchon's America?  : Is it  a)vineland the fair damsel awaiting true love's kiss, b)lake stream and prairie the abused, sometimes utterly polluted,  and abandoned daughter of dreams best hidden, c)free and easy, guns and uniforms make me hot, pierce my v and save me from boredom,  d)  a nation of TV zombies addicted to fast flesh and vicarious  numbness e) money and guns gone crazy  f) just give me some truth, something real, something that might last g) I'm a lost cause  but my babies, my babies, save my children h) all the above, plus rock and roll, and so much more. Anyway.   America is the babe and she just can't make up her mind who she is or who she loves.
>>>>>
>>>>> I have another theory of the origins of and reasons for this literary pattern, and probably more lined up in the recesses of my mind, but this one is big enough to paint half the sky.  It is contained within a larger theory which covers the rest of the sky and most of time. The larger theory is this. Pynchon is playing God and his collected works are his Bible. He wants to rewrite the old old story and include some of the parts previously left out by the high priests of God porn. He is setting his version in the Eden, the Babylon and  shining new world Jerusalem of America. But he is not above the inclusion of talking snakes, sex and detective work,  bionic Eves,  a hollow earth, more sex and detective work, competing aliens, apocalyptic rockets,,  psychedelic toiletry to refresh the Bowels of any apostle, crucifixions in the Utah desert  and time machines to give us a little glimpse of the futures which are being traded these days along with paranoia and other problems that accompany the whole Calvinist Predestination riff. If those don't seem like biblical themes,  well, it's a weirder book than many know.
>>>>>
>>>>>                                                  THE 2 HUSBAND LOVERS AND THE 2 WOMEN IN THE SONG OF SONGS
>>>>> So I think  there are many Bible stories and themes that are thinly and thickly veiled in Pynchon's work along with post-biblical religious themes. This is one. One of the more mysterious works in scripture is the Song of Songs.  It is a weird and beautiful and revolting love poem. 'One More Cup of Coffee,' or 'Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts' could easily have been inspired by this poem. The Bible writers were, let us say, conflicted about the proper role of the whole love-interest angle of literature. They knew the book and the religion would never sell without sex and that means opening Pandora's dangerous little box. I mean, you are telling this ripping good yarn about the creation of the stars and naming of the animals, and magic trees in the Garden of Eden and some little Girl raises her voice and asks, loud enough for everyone to hear, Mommy, what did Mrs. God do?  Which is why Eve appears right quick in the story, consorting with snakes  wrecking paradise and relegated to the shut-up-and-listen  part of the synagogue. There she hears about the importance of being pretty, making boy babies, standing by your man, and serving the chosen people.
>>>>>
>>>>> So one  place this conflicted attitude to love and sex shows up is in the Song of Songs. One interpretation of this poem is as a kind of national love song with 2 characters,  the male character is Israel as God represented by King Solomon and the female is Israel as the beautiful bride, the land, the people.  In the course of the poem the bride starts as a wild deer, lilies and clusters of grapes, tender and sweet  and she slowly becomes a palace and an armed tower.  The king was once a dark skinned shepherd boy and is now the mighty Solomon with multiple wives, palaces and gold. If Solomon represents peace, as his name implies, it is the peace that comes from being center of economic and military power. The future of Israel is the unassailable union of God and all who have come to union with the God of Israel, the Lord of Hosts.
>>>>> But there is another interpretation of the poem where the shepherd is really just a poor handsome young man of the earth. And Solomon knows and marvels that a young woman he desires for his harem would prefer such a lad to him and that she seeks to escape with this wild Roebuck from the interest of Solomon the Great. Solomon sees a future for her as a part of the palace of his magnificence and potency, but part of him loves her for her true passion. The poem in this case is unresolved as to what happens, all hinging on the heart of the babe.
>>>>>  In the course of the poem there is a kind of conflicting eros, one is the eros of orchards and wilderness, flowers and wheat. And one is the eros of power, architecture, weapons, security, walled gardens, gold, and milk baths.
>>>>> The genius of this ancient poem is the invocation of the universal in the particular. The conflict is both an inner and an outer one that easily resonates in our own time and setting.  America and the public and private inner lives much of the world continues to veer from the securities of fascism and it's architecture of the machinery for control, extraction seduction and growth which inevitably becomes cancer and desolation,  and to then swing toward more idealistic visions of a healed planet with wild places, harmony with nature and neighbors , and the romance of adventure, creativity. Both extremes may be flawed and unrealistic but one of them is far more dangerous than the other and neither Pynchon nor the rest of us knows how the young lovers can win this one.
>>>>>
>>>>> But if his larger project is to say that we are that authors of any Bible we might embrace, and that every spiritual text must include the whole raunchy  and delightfully crazy truth of things, and inasmuch as tragedy mingles here with heroism and slapstick, the point is that we are, in our whole mundane lives, also the shapers of a larger destiny and that somewhere buried under all the files and the secret corridors and stolen loot is the age old question, "Who do you Love?"
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -
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