Politics vs Art

[Joseph Tracy]

It would reallly be a worthy project in this reading of GR to collect these authorial comments. Perhaps to spend some time to look at them as a whole. Perhaps this collection has been done by a Pynchon critic? In my memory these comments paint a grim picture of the anti-democratic, anti-love nature of the reigning bureaucracies that dominate western culture. But, while they would, for most people constitute a scathing critique, they are often, as I remember, more descriptive than prescriptive. They are precise and matter of fact, not examples of ethical outrage.  
  To my mind P’s reluctance to tell us what to think or feel makes his picture of the shaping realities of WW2 and our own time  something we must  grapple with on a deeper level than agreement or disagreement.  Why do we agree, why is this loathesome, stupid, inspiring, natural? Can humans find common ground or a personal basis for a life that is fulfilling and a way of being and relating that is more than just alignment with a convenient power block, a directionless empire of buying selling killing fucking collecting, and getting bought sold killed fucked and collected?
  To my mind if there is something  that changes positively from GR to ATD or M&D, VL it is a movement beyond the estrangement of youth and particularly the estrangement from community that happens when you realize you are deeply at odds with the philosophies and values of your time. Some of this estrangement in GR has to do with war itself, how it forces people into a very lonely confrontation with death, where they are asked in the blossom of personal identity to sacrifice a life they have barely begun to explore for a cause they have no way of truly understanding and which may be no more than mass propaganda. 
  

> On May 3, 2016, at 8:56 AM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> DM:" Pynchon never overtly says fascism or colonialism and the violence and self centered egotism produced by these mindsets are destructive, blinding, seductive, evil."
> 
> Oh yes he does. The branch office in our brain piece is the most obvious, but interspersed through the book are other little outbreaks of authorial comment, of frustration, exasperation and rage at Their destructive ways. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l