"Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive" (Molly Hite)

Mark Kohut mark.kohut at gmail.com
Fri Apr 1 16:00:57 CDT 2016 

Ok, Joseph, I'll stop. Words, words, words. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 1, 2016, at 1:57 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  I agree fully that a book is a highly crafted object. I meant dream only in the sense that the events of the story take place in the imagination, not that they don’t have real weight and importance.  They do and I’m with you on your defense of litereature.  I have frequently made the case that Pynchon treats the kind of mythic fictional worlds in his novels ( Chums, Vheissue, Thantoids) with literary equality to the historic events  depicted. Anyway it was intended in the spirit of Shakespeare’s Tempest and not in any way to minimize the artfulness and power of the work.
> 
> Pynchon  does remind you that you are in a fictional world for several reasons, one of which is to acknowledge the crazy position of authorship- where are these materials coming from, does someone fully know, does the author? Dreams are also sometimes elaborately crafted in my experience. By what, who or how is elusive.  Many dreams, however, are just dark inscrutable gobbledygook- not talking about that, though it seems P does let some of that slip in on the occasional banana peel.
> 
>> On Apr 1, 2016, at 5:27 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> often nice mini-essays taking off from posts, texts and notions with a political vision I am sympathetic too (until I am not in agreement any longer but who cares) and of course not definitive, we aren't, just trying to talk but within higher standards
>> per Jochen's (and others) right ideals and THEN
>> 
>> I think it was the 'After all" that did it, offhandedly trying to slip in a 'definitive'  that makes me shout NO, IN THUNDER!...
>> a great book is NOT a dream, NOT even close, it is an ACT, it is a made and crafted Work--every detail of it intentional we know--
>> of Art; a massive aesthetic statement in a structured symbolic form that can--should--as Monte and your other post indicate--crack the frozen sea within us (Kafka); that changes OUR VERY BEING, our ways of seeing everything (as w Monte, you, I guess and 
>> many of us, I,too, have seen the whole world differently because of Pynchon--and still do).
>> 
>> No real book is a dream unless of course Maya applies to all of them and the world; no real book is a dream unless we are talking Plato's shadow reality (of everything) on the cave wall; unless there is a Buddhist strain of seeing that you mean that applies to real books and the real world; unless your post is a Borges' story or unless the book is Kerouac's Book of Dreams or Finnegans Wake, which, they say, IS. 
>> 
>> yesterday was Descartes' birthday, he who gave us The West, for good and ill. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 11:32 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> My observations are not meant to be definitive, and I believe there  is along with some dark undertones, a  refreshing subversive quality to the humor of these soldiers, spies etc. What I see again and again is an undermining of our inherited ways of looking at WW2 and thus of many other issues. Our desire to be heroes is being questioned here. Human fantasies and dreams have tremendous reality to humans, affecting us on practical and psychological levels. Pynchon treats this dreamier material with what seems to me equal weight to other parts of history/experience. After all, a book is a dream.
>> Whether Slothrop’s map is about sexual fantasies or real events doesn’t matter in the context of the story. They have a mysteriously predictive quality as do so many dreams and actual affairs. It seems to me that P wants to leave that prophetic intrusion into human affairs intact even when it may have scientific or psychological explanations.  Even if all meaning is paranoid delusion, which is not so far from certain Bhuddist thinking, and we have a sense of another way of being, we will be asked to approximate what remains in our experience. The language that follows, to the degree that language is the means of communication, tends to the allusive, the poetic. The Tao that can be put into words is not the Tao.
>> 
>>> On Mar 31, 2016, at 8:11 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> So,  sorry Joseph for too shallow a post.
>>> 
>>> And, John, thinking about your observations combined with my current preoccupation with
>>> the poetic 'compression' of allusions, themes and meanings in GR----I mean, GR is as densely
>>> poetic as The Wasteland and, what? fifty times longer?---the levels of 'reality' vs 'not' and levels
>>> of fantasy vs 'the real' can now be compared to P opening out all such levels in
>>> AtD, the narrative about Chums within stories interacting with a 'real' world and later merging
>>> --in the tales-- with other imagined beings who then become 'real' within the history of the book.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 7:44 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I would agree in general since P makes fun---satirizes to use a 'high' term
>>> for low fun--but right HERE it seems to me he has made a point of the contrast
>>> 
>>> so that we can see another level of real life fantasies vs dreams and fantasies.
>>> 
>>> But I see your point and glad it is made.
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 7:36 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I don't know that there is an opposing of "dreams and fantasies"
>>> versus reality within the diegesis of GR. The language of the banana
>>> sequence, the mad macro and micro of molecules and bombs and this dude
>>> who apparently can be yoked with the fantasies of others... I think
>>> the reader is supposed to be knotted into this however they're able to
>>> be. I'd argue the sequence isn't about whaling sanctions or double
>>> entry accounting but JT's reading isn't too on the nose.
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 10:08 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Joseph T writes:
>>>> Fun? This is fun of very boyish fantasy materials. Wars start with these
>>>> fantasies of conquest, potency, control through killing.
>>>> 
>>>> There is a nice range of ambiguity in possible 'readings' of this scene as
>>>> we have been exploring but there are 'readings' which are projective and
>>>> absolutely against the ranges within the text.
>>>> 
>>>> Your second sentence is one of them.....esp the line "control thru killing'
>>>> which comes from WHERE here?   P explores
>>>> the fantasies that feed and create wars but Pirate and crew HERE are NOT
>>>> enacting any fantasy---P purposely contrasts Pirate
>>>> waking up and creating this breakfast for all with the dream and fantasies.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 3:24 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> The gas released from Bananas is  known to make other fruits ripen. The
>>>>> chemistry of gases is a major force in German technology of the time,
>>>>> chemicals liquid and gaseous, released from coal, fossil fuels long in the
>>>>> ripening.  The ( C)Osmos nose is big and smells something big, something
>>>>> ripening. The bananas are growing up from the black soil of recycled dead
>>>>> organic matter.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Fun? This is fun of very boyish fantasy materials. Wars start with these
>>>>> fantasies of conquest, potency, control through killing. War releases a
>>>>> powerful ripening, some to spoilage and rot, some to death and recycling,
>>>>> some to seek a freedom that can’t be taken away in a moment. People make
>>>>> jokes to cope with situations they can’t control, madness they want to
>>>>> challenge. Pirate sings goofball guy humor as do the Yanks on the street.
>>>>> Lookout primates, other primates and other bananas are falling from above.
>>>>> We send them up and by God they come right down.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It is interesting in some weird way that I would call both Cruz and Trump
>>>>> adenoidal The sound of their voice like an echo chamber of egotism . Is
>>>>> Adenoia anything like Paranoia?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Can’t keep up with the list as i’d like to right now, too many demands on
>>>>> my time. But enjoying a quick read-through tonight.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mar 28, 2016, at 1:27 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I don't see much fun in the description of the Banana breakfast - the
>>>>>> tone is more of a surreal, desperate attempt to forget what's happening
>>>>>> outside. It's not Pynchon who's saying fuck off, but "the high intricacy of
>>>>>> the weaving of its [the musaceous odor] molecules.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Earlier, on the roof: "Pirate has become famous for his Banana
>>>>>> Breakfasts … the politics of bacteria, the soils stringing of rings and
>>>>>> chains in nets only God can tell the meshes of, having seen the fruit thrive
>>>>>> to lengths of a foot and a half, yes, amazing but true." These are unnatural
>>>>>> bananas, grown in the shadow of the power station and the gasworks.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Why the references to molecules here? They're the first of many
>>>>>> references to organic (i.e. unnatural) chemistry. Similarly, I don't think
>>>>>> the Adenoid appears as a random, comic incident. Pynchon isn't going to
>>>>>> write about the holocaust directly, but it hovers in the background. At
>>>>>> least that's how I read it.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> LK
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Monte Davis
>>>>>> Sent: Mar 28, 2016 11:11 AM
>>>>>> To: Mark Kohut
>>>>>> Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen , pynchon -l , kelber
>>>>>> Subject: Re: "Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive" (Molly Hite)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "...a wonderful breakfast... the scent alone is enough to ward of[f]
>>>>>> death, Pynchon famously says “Fuck Death.” So by indulging in this pleasure,
>>>>>> they are able to escape death, they are able to escape the trajectory of
>>>>>> human nature even if just for a morning.. maybe by not denying these
>>>>>> pleasures we might be able to get out of the arc of human nature..."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This is more or less how I read the banana breakfast, too: Bakhtin's
>>>>>> carnival, Brueghel's land of Cockaigne, a celebration of excess mocking
>>>>>> wartime austerity. Yes, it's anomalous in the novel's larger world: an
>>>>>> island or oasis or refuge, just as the rooftop bananery is an artificial
>>>>>> enclosure against December chill, just as its bananas are luxuries available
>>>>>> only to these officers with connections. Still, "a spell, against falling
>>>>>> objects" seems to me as good as it gets in that world.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Which is why I respectfully disagree with part of Laura's discussion
>>>>>> last week:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> LK> The musaceous odor. Anyone who's ever taken organic chemistry (did
>>>>>> Pynchon? Anyone know?) has probably synthesized banana ester in the lab.
>>>>>> it's a standard lab exercise, and it's easy to know if you've got it right,
>>>>>> by that musaceous odor ... So even when Pynchon is talking about Nature (in
>>>>>> this case, unnaturally growing bananas), he's reminding us how easy it is
>>>>>> for science to mimic it, or to tear apart and exploit the delicate
>>>>>> molecules.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> There are certainly many places in GR where industrial organic (and
>>>>>> inorganic) chemical technology has an unmistakably evil, negative,
>>>>>> anti-human or even "anti-life" context and emotional affect. BUT NOT, I
>>>>>> mildly demur, HERE!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Pynchon gives us "peculiar alkaloids" in the bananery's long-composted
>>>>>> soil... "the politics of bacteria, the soil’s stringing of rings and chains
>>>>>> in nets only God can tell the meshes of"... "musaceous odor..."
>>>>>> "taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the
>>>>>> high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules"... "genetic chains...
>>>>>> labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty
>>>>>> generations"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> But does he, HERE, say or imply anything about artificial synthesis (as
>>>>>> contrasted with life's proliferating variety)? Does he say anything about a
>>>>>> "mimicked" smell as distinct from the real smell of real yummy 'nanas? Are
>>>>>> there any "delicate" molecules being "torn apart" and "exploited" here --
>>>>>> other than as life has routinely, "by its nature" done so 24/7 for a few
>>>>>> billion years before IG Farben came along? No.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm fine with Laura writing about her associations, which I believe were
>>>>>> brought on by Pynchon's uses (above) of chemical and biological vocabulary
>>>>>> and concepts. In fact, I share them: I've made isoamyl acetate and isopentyl
>>>>>> acetate, too. But that's quite different from "Pynchon is reminding us" of
>>>>>> "science" doing any such thing. In fact, I read those phrases above as
>>>>>> integral to the unmistakably positive, celebratory "flavor" of the banana
>>>>>> breakfast -- not as a coded warning that exploitive synthetic technology is
>>>>>> lurking beneath. The weaving and unweaving of molecules *is*, explicitly, "a
>>>>>> charm, against falling objects."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Here's a reader I respect and admire, and a stock response that runs
>>>>>> through fifty years of Pynchonology: "Everyone knows that Pynchon mistrusts
>>>>>> and fears and warns us about science and technology, so wherever their
>>>>>> vocabulary and concepts crop up, he's on the attack."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This matters to me, as I wrote at length in the exchanges here in June
>>>>>> of 2013: https://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1306&msg=174066 ,
>>>>>> etc etc etc...
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It leads, again and again, to systematic ignoring and misreading of
>>>>>> positive, mixed and ambivalent  contexts and associations for P's uses of
>>>>>> scientific and technical vocabulary, concepts, and perspectives. Fair
>>>>>> warning: I'll be coming back to this throughout the BtZ42, and throughout GR
>>>>>> if we continue.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 5:24 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> "having evidently the time, in his travels among places of death, to
>>>>>> devote to girl-chasing"---p.19 Miller edition
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I believe Ms. Hite is the one who also said, when encountering the claim
>>>>>> that the Whole Sick Crew were 'hysterical' caricatures
>>>>>> said: "I knew these people' IRL.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 4:13 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Molly Hite’s critical work with Pynchon published in 2004 has the
>>>>>>> title “Fun Actually Was Becoming Quite Subversive.” It is an interesting
>>>>>>> title, because it originated somewhere completely different than Gravity’s
>>>>>>> Rainbow, in fact it came from the 1969 trial of the Chicago Seven, a group
>>>>>>> of young men from antiwar and revolutionary groups accused of disrupting the
>>>>>>> 1968 Democratic Convention. This was considered a very important trial in
>>>>>>> the counterculture movement, something Pynchon famously embraced in his
>>>>>>> works. The exact quote originated from the testimony of Abbie Hoffman and
>>>>>>> reads “fun was very important… it was a direct rebuttal of the kind of
>>>>>>> ethics and morals that were being put forth in the country to keep people
>>>>>>> working in a rate race.” Hite uses this to introduce her interpretation of
>>>>>>> Pynchon. She argues that “the idea of fun could subvert an oppressive
>>>>>>> capitalist structure is central to this novel of excess.”
>>>>>>            Molly Hite uses Herbert Marcuse’s 1955 culture synthesis
>>>>>> Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud to help frame her
>>>>>> argument, and plainly states that this work must have influenced Pynchon.
>>>>>> Marcuse claims that the period of time, which this book was written in, was
>>>>>> a period of great productivity and excess, and with the technological
>>>>>> advances, it became economically feasible to have a “leisure culture.”
>>>>>> However with this culture of leisure comes a raising of standards and
>>>>>> consequently a “surplus-repression.” This is repression is the repression of
>>>>>> Freudian pleasures, conceding or flat out rejecting the gratification of
>>>>>> many desires which Freud saw as necessary for a society to organize and
>>>>>> survive. Marcuse argues that by denying these pleasures principles that
>>>>>> “advanced civilizations are in danger from a second group of instinctive
>>>>>> impulses striving for death.” This, Hite states, is where we get the
>>>>>> dramatization of the destruction from the rocket, as it becomes global. She
>>>>>> argues “The V-2 Rocket rises under human guidance..” and this is where we
>>>>>> understand the “death drive.” This is the natural tendency of society, to
>>>>>> progress to a certain point, and then fall into the death drive; the arc of
>>>>>> human civilization not unlike the arc of the bomb.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            Hite states that Pynchon understood Marcuse’s possibility of
>>>>>> escape from postindustrial destruction, and encoded it in his book, however
>>>>>> slight this chance might be. By not becoming individuals we are doomed to,
>>>>>> as individuality in Gravity’s Rainbowis synonymous with disrupting the
>>>>>> productivity and subsequent regression of human nature. This is where the
>>>>>> overt sexual tones of the book come from, especially the more risqué ones.
>>>>>> These sexual acts are done not in hopes of productivity, or reproducing, but
>>>>>> simply out of pleasure. By not denying these pleasures and becoming
>>>>>> individual of the society, we can escape the trajectory of destruction. Hite
>>>>>> does acknowledge that these chances are incredibly small, that betrayal and
>>>>>> self-defeating tendencies are built into the system, that “every revolution
>>>>>> has been a betrayed revolution.” So for Hite’s interpretation, humanity is
>>>>>> at stake, the trajectory is annihilation, and Pynchon offers a way to escape
>>>>>> that trajectory.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>            I would like to agree with Hite in her thinking. In the very
>>>>>> beginning of the novel, we are introduced with a very dark image of the
>>>>>> concentration camp, with people being ushered into a bleak hotel. At that
>>>>>> hotel, they wait quietly for the bomb to drop without any hope left. Right
>>>>>> after we get that dark image, we are given one of the most colorful scenes
>>>>>> in the novel, the banana breakfast. After a night of indulging in alcohol to
>>>>>> excess, Pirate wakes up and picks bananas, something that was rationed
>>>>>> during the time period. He then begins to cook a wonderful breakfast
>>>>>> consisting of banana everything, and the scent alone is enough to ward of
>>>>>> death, Pynchon famously says “Fuck Death.” So by indulging in this pleasure,
>>>>>> they are able to escape death, they are able to escape the trajectory of
>>>>>> human nature even just for a morning. I believe scenes like this are a clear
>>>>>> road map that Pynchon gives us, that maybe by not denying these pleasures we
>>>>>> might be able to get out of the arc of human nature, or in Pynchon’s work,
>>>>>> the literal bomb. The chances are slim however, these people are protected
>>>>>> only as long as the scent of the banana breakfast wafts over them, but the
>>>>>> chance does exist.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Hite, Molly, “‘Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive’: Herbert
>>>>>> Marcuse, the Yippies, and the Value System of Gravity’s Rainbow,”
>>>>>> Contemporary Literature 51.4 (Winter 2010): 677-702. <
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> https://englit0500.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/fun-actually-was-actually-becoming-subversive/
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>> 
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> -
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