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

[Mark Kohut]

"having evidently the time, in his travels among places of death, to devote
to girl-chasing"---p.19 Miller edition

I believe Ms. Hite is the one who also said, when encountering the claim
that the Whole Sick Crew were 'hysterical' caricatures
said: "I knew these people' IRL.

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 4:13 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> 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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