BtZ42, Vp.41 (the real thing)

[Monte Davis]

Not a bombed-out wasteland, just an available house in an evacuated small
town.  I agree the cold and isolation probably has more to do with P's need
for thematic scene-setting than actual inability to find any other nest for
a dirty weekend.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 3:42 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Their present "taking on" of propaganda consists of violating rules/laws
> in order to have their own "zone," a space for their love.  Why must that
> space be in a cold bombed-out wasteland (why not in a more comfy place?)?
> I think that is a better question.  It almost seems as if they are offering
> the War the example of their fucking and loving in the heart of its
> devastation as a talisman of literal fucking against its power.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Good question. I assumed the “more” was about risk to personal safety,
>> that the town is evacuated because it is a target, and/or  damaged and
>> without the safeguards of a well maintained infrastructure: gas, water,
>> police???
>>
>> > On Apr 24, 2016, at 10:02 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > [Please excuse the previous version, sent prematurely]
>> >
>> > Roger & Jessica's life in the evacuated town "is marginal, hungry,
>> chilly—most times they’re too paranoid to risk a fire— but it’s something
>> they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than
>> propaganda has ever asked them for."
>> >
>> > What propaganda "asks them for" is outlined a paragraph earlier: "it’s
>> better to-gether, snuggled in, than back out in the paper, fires, khaki,
>> steel of the Home Front. That, indeed, the Home Front is something of a
>> fiction and lie, designed, not too subtly, to draw them apart, to subvert
>> love in favor of work, abstraction, required pain, bitter death."
>> >
>> > Restated later, p. 177: "Damned Beaver/Jeremy *is* the War, he is every
>> assertion the fucking War has ever made—that we are meant for work and
>> government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams,
>> the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found
>> among the idle and mindless hours of the day . . "
>> >
>> > Question: what exactly is the "more" that R&J will take on to keep what
>> they have? What do they do to themselves that is somehow *like* and
>> *beyond* what the collective psychosis of "total war" is demanding?
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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