BE -- "death wish for the planet" why the internet?

[Mark Kohut]

Okay, I've let it unfurl but, now, sick, feverish 102.6 feeling as weak as I probably will on my deathbed ( if I live long enough to have a deathbed) but I must disagree wholeheartedly. 

Where to start? First, THERE IS ZERO EVIDENCE that TRP has written any of his novels for ONE political questioning and ALSO NEVER to narrowly make a book bring " a viewpoint into discussion" about an event, one wrapped in his ironic ambiguity as the recent good text-based discussion is pursuing. Do you know what Americans who read novels, even good ones, think of novels as political discussion platforms. Not since UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, that totally unironic novel. 

Now we believe " the reviewers" shift attention to March because she's " more easily dismissed" ?   This, to me, is probably an invented memory and this whole 9/11 thing NOW as the avoided real topic is absurd. Good reviewers, and there were lots of them, I say, focused on the meanings of the whole novel, Maxine's Being in the novel as well March's and other characters.

Remember when Morris was so surprised about the calm descriptive section of the event and its NY effect? He wanted to restart the read which no one was participating in. Pynchon is, among other things, a very good sociological and historical chronicler of the times he writes about. I was in NYC at the time and HE GOT ITS EFFECT then, exactly right, IMHO. 

A---and, the stock market fluctuations were investigated. There was so much money spent on that--remember how much money Congress had appropriated? There was a higher market and airline stock shorting that P --of course---got down as fact. Locating who, where and why?---just think about it. Hidden accounts, online accounts ---perhaps hidden by DEEP WEB anonymous set-ups--there's P's great associative resonance at work again, is one way I understand him putting it in there at all. 

PLEASE. throwing out truther stupidities while distancing yourself from them? I say you are better than Trump.       ( and " some people heard sounds out of order?) happens in my bourgeois world all the time; police and investigators KNOW THIS. 

THEY HAVE ALL BEEN REFUTED BY SCIENTISTS. check Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and so many more ( if you check them) that you won't have time for the GR Reread. 

BE starts with a beautiful family happening and ends with one. Family is a theme worth getting a fix on whether or not it works for you. Suggest rereading it. 

Morris & Bailey: you want a Group Read of BE as well as GR, bring it on, but I'm not organizing it AGAIN. 


Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 3, 2016, at 11:10 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> Agree about the lack of a political/social reading and the reason for that. 
>  Let’s face it;  the story has Maxine witnessing things related to 9-11 and the growth of the NSA surveillance that really should be explained.They are fictional but have parallels in the real events.  I think the implication of this is important because Pynchon sets up Maxine as an honest, thorough and realistic person. What she sees is simply ignored by most book reviews and the questions raised by what pynchon has Maxine seeing are shifted by reviewers to March who is more easily dismissed since she is interpreting rather than simply witnessing the events.  The only reason I can think that Pynchon includes these events is that he sees evidence and facts that need to be explained. Take the airline stockmarket activity. How can such important evidence fail to be thoroughly checked out, but a nation with no ties to 9-11 be invaded and bombed to smithereens and a torture program implemented? 
> 
> There seem to me to be many reasonable  people who have good reasons to think the official narrative about 9-11 is flawed, and that  serious evidence has been ignored. Let us assume for the sake of argument that Pynchon sees things that way, has such questions , or at least thinks they are legitimate and wanted a book that brought that viewpoint into the potential realm of discussion. Wouldn’t the book as written do precisely that if read without reviewers fears of treading into truther terrain?  The whole 'hah-hah, we all know he isn’t suggesting what he seems to be suggesting’ is glib and dismissive of the structure of the text.
> 
> Along with the engineering questions ( Building 7 comesto mind, the lack of footage from the Pentagon...) and the stock market activities that were never pursued  there are a great many witnesses  to the 9-11events  which have been excluded and sidelined because they heard explosions out of sequence with the official story or produced some similar discord in stories.  Many on the official commision felt that the commission failed to do a thorough honest job. I am not building a case here, just pointing out some of why so many non-Alex Jones types contributed to the truther calls for answers.  My own feeling is that if all such concerns were the product of paranoia alone they would be much easier to dismiss.  I honestly don’t like even being associated with  the truthers; there are no benefits and serious recriminations to in any way legtimizing their questions. But after reading on both sides so far I still see many questions about the event that remain as major blocks to my unquestioning acceptance of the official story. 
> 
> Once again, the book ends with Maxine and others deciding to back off from their investigation because it has become clear that the dangers are real and the chances of getting anywhere vitually nil. The idea that this can be turned into some kind of affirmation of normal family life with Kav Maga lessons doesn’t work for me.  
> 
> 
>> On Mar 3, 2016, at 4:54 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>> 
>> Am 03.03.2016 um 04:48 schrieb Joseph Tracy:
>>> I  question the Chabon take that this book is all about the endurance
>>> of family. What I see is family and decency in the last outpost of
>>> retreat before the succsexy-death-wish- one finds lurking behind
>>> doors, on rooftops, in the Ice-see basement, following the numbers,
>>> falling from the sky and anyplace else one isn’t supposed to look.
>>> Maxine does look( as many real citizens did) and must shut her mouth
>>> because the society provides no safety for  whistleblowers.
>> 
>> A political, not to say a deep-political reading, of BE has unfortunately been largely absent from the discussion and, as far as I can tell, most of the reviews. Probably because of a fear to enter "truther"-territory.
>> -
>> 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