Politics vs Art

Mon May 2 14:54:05 CDT 2016

You:
"Pynchon never overtly says fascism or colonialism and the violence and
self centered egotism produced by these mindsets are destructive, blinding,
seductive, evil."

Me:
And he never overtly says that burning Jews in ovens was bad.  In fact, he
doesn't even mention it in GR.  His targets in GR are bigger than specific
historical events, but they do fit into his bigger mosaic.  I'm not saying
that he doesn't have an opinion, but in GR he isn't ham-fisted (like he can
be in later works).  In fact, in GR he is so adept that he does approach
that elusive Rorschach.

David Morris

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 11:39 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  I am sympathetic to what you say, but I don’t really buy that GR is a
> Rorschach ink blot.  I don’t buy that Pynchon has no ethical POV , no
> political affinities, no cultural criticism and that the only things to be
> found in this book is a mirror for the readers' beliefs. The fact that he
> does not tell his readers what to think and thus invites interpretation is
> not the same as an absence of worldview. What is interesting is that P
> occasionally breaks through the narrative with rather absolute statements,
> but as I see it they aren’t commandments about what to think or how to
> interpret the narrative, they are what he thinks, and thus a clue as to the
> kind of thinking that shaped the narrative.
>
> If one were to collect every such paragraph or sentence of authorial
> comment it would be very consistent with a general interpretive scheme.
> Yes, nuance and multivalence are common, but they are also under remarkable
> artistic control.
>
> To be more specific and focused, are GR, V, ATD, M&D anticolonialist? It
> just seems to me extremely hard to read these and come away with a positive
> view of empire buildng.
> Pynchon never overtly says fascism or colonialism and the violence and
> self centered egotism produced by these mindsets are destructive, blinding,
> seductive, evil. He shows it, shows how it invades the individual, invades
> organizations, enlists sadism, enlists fear, enllists ambition, enlists
> religion, covers itself with art, with noble rhetoric, with the goals of
> scientific advancement. He shows what it does to its victims, its
> sacrificial offerings, the colonized, the preterite.  I see similar
> patterns of criticism with Capitalism, or the mythology of scientific
> progress. Even the question of individual liberation and transcendence is
> chided and given a rough look.
>
> Maybe you are right though on some deep level. Maybe the universe itself
> is a multidimensional rorschach and we tend to see ouselves first. Maybe
> that is what P sees and artfully reflects, but the universe is also
> powerfully intolerant of this narcissism.  And I think P gives his readers
> reasons to question such complacency . My own feeling is that certain
> disciplines and thought and experience deliver the individual from this
> hall of mirrors experience into a state closer to what Buddha  called
> awake. For me a large part of the attraction of Pynchon’s art is the
> experience of being jolted out of the preconceived and comfortable, of
> being shocked awake if only in bits and starts and enabled to see and think
> about the larger patterns.
>
> I am not intending a final say or antagonistic put -down, just my own
> attempt to understand.
>
> “ Do I understand your question, then, is it hopeless and forlorn?
> Come in she said, I give you shelter from the storm"
>
>
> > On May 1, 2016, at 10:42 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think GR is a Rorschach blotch.
> >
> > That is a part of its genius.
> >
> > It lets everyone see their beliefs become possibly true.
> >
> > Amen.
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> > On Sun, May 1, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > I don’t see how anarchist golf was much more than a bit of fun with the
> idea of anarchism. It was funny to me and sandwiched inside weightier and
> darker themes as comic relief, Poinstman of the knights of the sacred
> toiled bowl, a youthful pig god running amok in the green hills od postwar
> Germany.
> >
> > Also the question of whether GR is overtly political is less clear to me
> than to you. My first reading was similar to my current reading and that
>  includes the fact that GR is the most politically confrontational work I
> have ever read. It challenges core myths about the uniqueness of WW2 as a
> good war, an heroic fight to end fascism. So much of the moral
> justification of the wars by the western powers since ww2 have hinged on
> that myth; so many assaults on liberty and self-determination have been
> promoted as ww2 style heroism. It hasn’t stopped; the language of heroism
> and sacrifice get louder and louder as it becomes less and less applicable,
> the hypocrisy harder to hide.
> >   I see ATD, M&D and GR as satiric masterworks which mock our self
> aggrandizing cultural stories, each book exploring key facets of cultural
> myths and history along with  personal stories of how those myths play out
> on a human scale .
> >   I have a hard time seeing the overtness of political ideas in ATD
> being different or more direct. My experience is one of layered artfulness
> that seems well seasoned in the sage flavors of experience and depth.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Apr 30, 2016, at 2:38 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > The politics of GR are rich and complex, and indeterminate, because
> its indictments are of the structure of everything, not just political.
> > >
> > > When the anarchists were playing no-rules golf in ATD, all I could do
> was wish I hadn't read that.
> > >
> > > David Morris
> > >
> > > On Sat, Apr 30, 2016 at 5:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Not for the first time, do Morris and I disagree about Against the
> Day. I think it is far better
> > > than I think he does; and "the politics' is essential to it----but the
> 'overt' politics are not even close
> > > to what Kirsch says the author's political vision is in Against the
> Day.
> > >
> > > And the politics in Against the Day is far less 'overt', I say, than
> 'the politics" of GR, which are
> > > positively In- Our-Face (if we look up) yet not a detraction but a
> raising up of GR to Art.
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 12:25 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > The politics in ATD was often a detraction from the art.  Overt
> politics tends to do that.
> > >
> > > David Morris
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > Adam Kirsch, an estimable critic in general, is on record dissing
> Against the Day because of its bad politics---violent anarchism, domestic
> terrorism, the authors' positions, etc.....as he misread it.
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/books/review/can-a-book-with-bad-politics-be-a-good-book.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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