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

[ish mailian]

I read it the same way myself and the other comments akin to it. Not
an attack on anyone, not certainly the author. In my confusing manner,
perhaps, I was only trying to get us to consider the humor and satire
of the scenes and episodes we are reading, to dig into the allusions
and the complexities, to gloss those sentences ans scenes that baffle
us. We've been through the major critical readings of GR more than
once.

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 12:14 PM, Becky  Lindroos
<bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Being called an “angry young man”  was a high compliment back in the 1950s, Britain.  Think Harold Pinter,  one of the bunch,  just won the Nobel in 2005 (and then died).
>
> That’s actually how I (being older) took the comment.  I didn’t take it as a criticism at all.
>
> The Angry Young Men were similar to the Beats here -  Kerouac and Ginsberg,  et al.
>
> Becky
>
>
>> On Apr 2, 2016, at 6:02 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I never said anyone attacked the author. What I an proposing is that
>> we do a closer reading, since we elected to focus on a section of the
>> text. A bit of the discussion has focused on the language, phrases,
>> images, narrative & Co. but most is opening up to make grand readings
>> that are retreads of previous discussion and mostly Pyndustry
>> standards.
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 7:43 PM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dude, it was me who called Pynchon, while writing GR, an angry young man... Chill out, nobody is attacking Thomas Pynchon... Just postulating ideas, trying to understand... Let's not get personal and let's try to be critical too... Put on some Allman Brothers, and relax...
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>> On Mar 31, 2016, at 4:47 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> P,  he uses humor, especially satire, to take on subjects that are
>>>> usually  treated with gravity and seriousness.
>>>>
>>>> The direct confrontation of social issues, most often the subject of
>>>> serious prose, is satirized.
>>>> So P satirizes those that seriously advocate the social changes he too
>>>> advances.
>>>>
>>>> That Watts essay he wrote is worthy of a Pynchon satire for sure.
>>>> Imagine the fun Ishmael Reed would have with it.
>>>>
>>>> The academics who have built a Pyndustry from his books take P for som
>>>> e kind of, what was Monte's phrase, angry young man or cuss or some
>>>> such bullshit. This is what the Pyndustry has dome to Pynchon, the man
>>>> they next to nothing about, but the author they have made in their own
>>>> image.
>>>>
>>>> P should be a responsible author, one who sign peace letters with
>>>> other serious artistes who are deeply worried about the bomb, the
>>>> criminally insane leadership in America, sure, in prose he might drip
>>>> a few drops here, there, but P's novels are for the witty, the real
>>>> fucking smart ones who use wit and humor, say fuck you when all else
>>>> fails, and are flippant subversives, like his narrators. Pynchon is no
>>>> role model. No self help book. No Sartre, no Camus.
>>>>
>>>> Hate is ridiculed with wit and humor, not with diatribe and
>>>> mouthpieces who preach. This ain't Dostoevsky. This ain't allegorical
>>>> modernism.
>>>>
>>>> This ain't postmodernism or postmodernist misread by modern readers.
>>>> That's all academic Mumbo Jumbo.
>>>>
>>>> Now that is the detective author we can look to for what P has done.
>>>>
>>>> Reed is no black academic's darling.
>>>> Pynchon is mostly cause he a white man.
>>>>
>>>> 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 Rainbow is 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/?list=pynchon-l
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l