BtZ: Pirate//Brown on Fantasy

Sun Mar 27 07:53:21 CDT 2016

 Fowler and Weisenburger were, before J Kerry Grant and others,  a
great duo for an introduction to the early readings of GR.
Weisenburger, as I mentioned recently, has developed his reading,
first into satire and more recently in the collaboration with Luc
Herman, along the lines that Monte has been sketching.

Pynchon, is no economist, but his brilliance is encyclopedic and his
use of texts, as in his capitalization of the Firm and the Long Run
(Death) is so clever, so remarkable, even in these Wikipedia and
Google times when everyone has access to everything all the time, he
still astonishes.

I get to giggling when I look at V. and read what P says about Chicago
School in SL Introduction because the battle between Chicago and
Keynes was over V. or GDP/Money.

That battle won by Chicago during the Carter Administration was
started in the 1950s, though it has no mention in P's novel V..

Here in GR, the Firm is, as Keynes notes in his essay I posted, is
obsessed not only with human labor and leisure but with the biological
work of the planet.  In contrast to what Brown argues, that we should
look more to the mystics than to the Platonic and Cartesians, P makes
the Firm a Scientific Cult full of mystics-scientists.

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 7:15 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Douglas Fowler, if I remember right, in his good book on GR,
> makes it a key point to link childhood play with the playfulness
> within GR, that is, to say P incorporates the positives of play and
> dreams in a childlike way within his characters.
>
> I do not think he was aware of Life Against Death, or expressed it much in
> his book,
> just fyi so no linking there.
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 12:17 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  In _On Creativity and the Unconscious_ Freud, in the short essay,
>> "The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming (1908), contrasts the
>> phantasies of children, who daydream of being grown up, play at what
>> they view it is like to live in the world of adults, and  have no
>> inhibitions, no shame in it, don't conceal this play, with the adults
>> on the other hand, who must hide play, fantasy, though they know that
>> all adults, to some extent must also day dream and have fantasies, for
>> they know too that what the fancy  is  not only often prohibited but
>> also that dreaming of it, playing at it, is the work or play of
>> children.
>>
>> It's a fascinating essay.
>>
>> Sorry I can't find a copy online.
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 7:41 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Noting some things in Life Against Death and GR that seem related (at
>> > least,
>> > they made me think of one another in rereading)., especially as we start
>> > looking at Pirate and his gift more.
>> >
>> > Brown (I mean you could pull ten relevant sentences out of any page in
>> > this
>> > book, so this is sort of arbitrary) says, pp 162-3 of my paperback of
>> > Life
>> > Against Death:
>> >
>> > "The regressive orientation keeps not only our moral personality
>> > (character,
>> > conscience) in bondage to the past, but also our cognitive faculty--in
>> > Freudian terminology, the ego's function of testing reality. The human
>> > ego,
>> > in its cognitive function, is no transparent mirror transmitting the
>> > reality-principle to the id; it has a more active, and distorting, role
>> > consequent to upon its incapacity to bear the reality of life in the
>> > present. The starting point for the human form of cognitive activity is
>> > loss
>> > of a loved reality."
>> >
>> > 163: "the ego does not abolish the pleasure-principle, but derives from
>> > it
>> > the energy sustaining its exploration of reality."
>> >
>> > "Hence also human consciousness is inseparable from an active attempt to
>> > alter reality, so as to 'regain the lost objects.'"
>> >
>> > "The more specific and concrete mechanism whereby the body-ego becomes a
>> > soul is fantasy. Fantasy may be defined as a hallucination which
>> > cathects
>> > the memory of gratification.; it is of the same structure as the dream,
>> > and
>> > has the same relation to the id and to instinctual reality as the
>> > dream."
>> >
>> > 164 "Identifications as modes of installing the Other inside the Self
>> > are
>> > fantasies."
>> >
>> > "Fantasy, according to The Interpretation of Dreams, is the product of
>> > the
>> > primary process, the human organism's first solution to the problem of
>> > frustration."
>> >
>> > Quoting Isaacs: "reality-thinking cannot operate without concurrent and
>> > supporting unconscious phantasies."
>> >
>> > 171: "Projections, with their fetishistic displacement of inner
>> > fantasies,
>> > must distort the external world."
>> >
>> >
>> > GR p. 12: "You can't run a war on gusts of emotion."
>> >
>> > GR p. 31: "All these things arise from one difficulty: control[...] The
>> > control is put inside. No more need to suffer passively under 'outside
>> > forces'--to veer into any wind."
>> >
>> > p. 36: "Incredible black-and-white Scorpia confirmed not a few Piratical
>> > fantasies about the glamorous silken-calved English realworld he'd felt
>> > so
>> > shut away from."
>> >
>> > p. 36 "[...]Scorpia figured as his Last Fling--though herself too young
>> > to
>> > know that, to know, like Pirate, what the lyrics to "Dancing in the
>> > Dark"
>> > are really about...
>> >
>> > "He will be scrupulous about never telling her. But there are times when
>> > it's agony not to go to her feet, knowing she won't leave Clive, crying
>> > you're my last chance...if it can't be you then there's no more
>> > time....Doesn't he wish, against all hope, that he could let the poor,
>> > Western-man's timetable go...but how does a man...where does he even
>> > begin,
>> > at age 33...."
>> >
>> > p. 37 "Yes he is waiting, to see if it will end for Roger the same way,
>> > part
>> > of him, never so cheery as at the spectacle of another's misfortune,
>> > rooting
>> > for Beaver and all that he, like Clive, stands for, to win out. But
>> > another
>> > part--an alternate self?--one that he mustn't be quick to call
>> > 'decent'--does seem to want for Roger what Pirate himself lost...."
>> >
>> > p. 37 "'You are a pirate,' she'd whispered the last day--neither of them
>> > knew it was the last day--'you've come and taken me off on your pirate
>> > ship.
>> > A girl of good family and the usual repressions. You've raped me. And
>> > I'm
>> > the Red Bitch of the High Seas....' A lovely game. Pirate wished she'd
>> > thought it up sooner. Fucking the last (already the last) day's light
>> > away
>> > down afternoon to dusk, hours of fucking, too in love with it to
>> > uncouple,
>> > they noticed how the borrowed room rocked gently, the ceiling obligingly
>> > came down a foot, lamps swayed from their fittings, some fraction of the
>> > Thameside traffic provided salty cries over the water, and nautical
>> > bells....
>> >
>> > "But back over their lowering sky-sea behind, Government hounds were on
>> > the
>> > track--drawing closer, the cutters are coming, the cutters and the sleek
>> > hermaphrodites of the law, agents who, being old hands, will settle for
>> > her
>> > safe return, won't insist on his execution or capture. Their logic is
>> > sound:
>> > give him a bad enough wound and he'll come round, round to the ways of
>> > this
>> > hard-boiled old egg of world and timetables, cycling night to
>> > compromising
>> > night...."
>> >
>> > "Scorpia's talc-white face, through the last window, across the last
>> > gate,
>> > was a blow to his heart. A flurry of giggles and best wishes arose from
>> > the
>> > Wonder Midgets and their admirers. Well, though Pirate, guess I'll go
>> > back
>> > in the Army...."
>> >
>> > It sounds like an apocalyptic death-sex fantasy.
>> >
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l