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

Ray Easton raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com
Mon Mar 28 15:29:27 CDT 2016


Even though I completely agree with the bigger point Monte is making, I too 
tend to read this particular scene in Debbie Downer fashion.  I find, as 
Laura said, an air of desperation about it all.


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On March 28, 2016 3:19:47 PM <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> I'm sympathetic to anyone who's able to read this as a fun comfort-food 
> fest. No demands that anyone adhere to my glummer view. Won't be the first 
> time I've been accused of being a party-pooper. Guilty as charged!
>
> Debbie Downer
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut
> Sent: Mar 28, 2016 3:47 PM
> To: kelber
> Cc: Monte Davis , Kai Frederik Lorentzen , pynchon -l
> Subject: Re: "Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive" (Molly Hite)
>
> My vote is for Monte and Kai on this one. Life Against Death. The Buddha 
> and the Tiger parable.
> That breakfast is presented as a wonderful embodiment of 'organic', 
> earth-bound--a good word for our naturalness in life---
> enjoyment. .......of plenitude beyond reality out of rich soil amidst the 
> bureaucratic death-wishing surroundings.......
> ....like the rich 'fish and plants' ending of M & D.....
>
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 1:27 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> I don't see much fun in the description of the Banana breakfast - the tone 
> is more of a surreal, desperate attempt to forget what's happening outside. 
> It's not Pynchon who's saying fuck off, but "the high intricacy of the 
> weaving of its [the musaceous odor] molecules.
>
> Earlier, on the roof: "Pirate has become famous for his Banana Breakfasts … 
> the politics of bacteria, the soils stringing of rings and chains in nets 
> only God can tell the meshes of, having seen the fruit thrive to lengths of 
> a foot and a half, yes, amazing but true." These are unnatural bananas, 
> grown in the shadow of the power station and the gasworks.
>
> Why the references to molecules here? They're the first of many references 
> to organic (i.e. unnatural) chemistry. Similarly, I don't think the Adenoid 
> appears as a random, comic incident. Pynchon isn't going to write about the 
> holocaust directly, but it hovers in the background. At least that's how I 
> read it.
>
> LK
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monte Davis
> Sent: Mar 28, 2016 11:11 AM
> To: Mark Kohut
> Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen , pynchon -l , kelber
> Subject: Re: "Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive" (Molly Hite)
>
> "...a wonderful breakfast... the scent alone is enough to ward of[f] 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 if just for a morning.. maybe by not denying these pleasures we 
> might be able to get out of the arc of human nature..."
>
> This is more or less how I read the banana breakfast, too: Bakhtin's 
> carnival, Brueghel's land of Cockaigne, a celebration of excess mocking 
> wartime austerity. Yes, it's anomalous in the novel's larger world: an 
> island or oasis or refuge, just as the rooftop bananery is an artificial 
> enclosure against December chill, just as its bananas are luxuries 
> available only to these officers with connections. Still, "a spell, against 
> falling objects" seems to me as good as it gets in that world.
>
> Which is why I respectfully disagree with part of Laura's discussion last week:
>
> LK> The musaceous odor. Anyone who's ever taken organic chemistry (did 
> Pynchon? Anyone know?) has probably synthesized banana ester in the lab. 
> it's a standard lab exercise, and it's easy to know if you've got it right, 
> by that musaceous odor ... So even when Pynchon is talking about Nature (in 
> this case, unnaturally growing bananas), he's reminding us how easy it is 
> for science to mimic it, or to tear apart and exploit the delicate molecules.
>
> There are certainly many places in GR where industrial organic (and 
> inorganic) chemical technology has an unmistakably evil, negative, 
> anti-human or even "anti-life" context and emotional affect. BUT NOT, I 
> mildly demur, HERE!
>
> Pynchon gives us "peculiar alkaloids" in the bananery's long-composted 
> soil... "the politics of bacteria, the soil’s stringing of rings and chains 
> in nets only God can tell the meshes of"... "musaceous odor..."
> "taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the 
> high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules"... "genetic chains... 
> labyrinthine enough to preserve some human face down ten or twenty generations"
>
> But does he, HERE, say or imply anything about artificial synthesis (as 
> contrasted with life's proliferating variety)? Does he say anything about a 
> "mimicked" smell as distinct from the real smell of real yummy 'nanas? Are 
> there any "delicate" molecules being "torn apart" and "exploited" here -- 
> other than as life has routinely, "by its nature" done so 24/7 for a few 
> billion years before IG Farben came along? No.
>
> I'm fine with Laura writing about her associations, which I believe were 
> brought on by Pynchon's uses (above) of chemical and biological vocabulary 
> and concepts. In fact, I share them: I've made isoamyl acetate and 
> isopentyl acetate, too. But that's quite different from "Pynchon is 
> reminding us" of "science" doing any such thing. In fact, I read those 
> phrases above as integral to the unmistakably positive, celebratory 
> "flavor" of the banana breakfast -- not as a coded warning that exploitive 
> synthetic technology is lurking beneath. The weaving and unweaving of 
> molecules *is*, explicitly, "a charm, against falling objects."
>
> Here's a reader I respect and admire, and a stock response that runs 
> through fifty years of Pynchonology: "Everyone knows that Pynchon mistrusts 
> and fears and warns us about science and technology, so wherever their 
> vocabulary and concepts crop up, he's on the attack."
>
> This matters to me, as I wrote at length in the exchanges here in June of 
> 2013: https://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1306&msg=174066 , 
> etc etc etc...
>
> It leads, again and again, to systematic ignoring and misreading of 
> positive, mixed and ambivalent  contexts and associations for P's uses of 
> scientific and technical vocabulary, concepts, and perspectives. Fair 
> warning: I'll be coming back to this throughout the BtZ42, and throughout 
> GR if we continue.
>
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 5:24 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "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/
>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?liston-l
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