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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

 > 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/


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