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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

" ... reading Herbert Marcuse ... " (Inherent Vice, p. 301)


On 28.03.2016 10:13, Kai Frederik Lorentzen 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/
>
>

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