Squaring TRP's Luddite Essay with His Sloth Essay

Thu Apr 13 08:37:16 CDT 2017

Or consider what happens to the "human scale" of a virtual creation in
Bleeding Edge. DeepArcher as Maxine experiences it in that first all-night
session is open-ended and entrancing, inviting modification and enhancement
by every user -- an anarchist miracle? A year later, it's been commodified,
colonized, full of pop-up ads and off-the-shelf avatars.

To me that's not saying "beware the inhuman, evil, Matrix-like seduction of
virtual reality"; it's saying "the same greed and control-freakery that
moved the craft weavers of Cheshire, Derby and Lancashire into dark satanic
mills are operative in pixel-land."

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 6:22 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Another way to talk about 'that distinction", as I see it, as one notices
> P "stitching back and forth across that distinction in the essays", which
> is clearly done here, of course, without the words I'm going to add,  is
> that the human scale matters.
>
> That the vision of 'what it means to be human" matters across all of the
> novels. Start with V, remember the human, and carry it forward. When human
> communities built the Olde Europe villages, which embody much in* Against
> the Day, *those brick bridges weren't anti-anything, for just one
> example.
>
> There is a solid vein of cultural/literary criticism that judges in these
> terms, in fact thinks that for literature it is one of the most important
> perspectives. Up to the Swedish Academy with a lot of humanism (and
> idiosyncratically spiritual) stops in-between.
>
> On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 10:44 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I don't resist at all Pynchon's kinship/affinity for the Luddites --
>> especially for  Ned Ludd himself as Badass folk hero, which is his route
>> into the subject. But Pynchon reminds us four times in the essay that their
>> struggle was not against new machinery (it had been in their homes and
>> workshops for generations), but against the Birmingham and Manchester
>> "cotton capitalists" who could put together hundreds of those machines and
>> water or steam power under one roof. Those economies of scale, that newly
>> enlarged bargaining power, swept away a 150-year-old, decentralized
>> "letting-out" system of craft textile production, tilting the playing field
>> so that workers who had been independent contractors had no choice but to
>> become employees.
>>
>> Historians have known this all along, but the broad-brush pop version
>> (which is what "Luddite" came to mean over time, and what C.P. Snow
>> invoked) conflates the *scale and economic organization* of a technology
>> with the technology itself. Some think that's a quibble; I don't, because I
>> see a lot of very deliberate stitching back and forth across that
>> distinction throughout Pynchon's work.
>>
>> ...And because every day I read heated arguments -- say, about Big Data
>> and social media and online privacy and NSA/Google/Facebook -- which get
>> hopelessly confused as people slide back and forth between 'technology is
>> doing this to us' and 'we're allowing/paying specific organizations with
>> specific agendas to do this to us.'
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 5:49 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for reposting. Yeah Pynchon obviously goes out of his way to
>>> demonstrate (or even generate) a more complicated idea of Luddism than
>>> simply anti-tech.
>>>
>>> Do you resist the idea that Pynchon demonstrates some kind of affinity
>>> for or even kinship with Luddism as you understand him to understand it?
>>>
>>> So to use some of your phrasing, let's replace Luddite (adj.) with
>>> "[anti] concentrated capital and market power" in the end of the sloth
>>> essay...
>>>
>>> "Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems
>>> increasingly to define us -- technology. Persisting in
>>> [ANTI-CONCENTRATED-CAPITAL-AND-MARKET-POWER] sorrow, despite
>>> technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our heads in virtual
>>> reality, glumly refusing to be absorbed in its idle, disposable fantasies,
>>> even those about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old days, full
>>> of leisurely but lethal misadventures with the ruthless villains of the
>>> Acedia Squad."
>>>
>>> So then Pynchon's--and maybe history's--more informed sense of what
>>> Luddite means/meant eventually catches up with the popular anti-technology
>>> sense anyway, at least so long as we are in the age of technology,
>>> resisting which looks for now an awful lot like resisting concentrated
>>> capital and market power?
>>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 3:42 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Nothing to contribute beyond another pitch for my own reading -- that
>>>> however we use the label now, the historical Luddites mobilized *not*
>>>> against technology -- the same that they and their grandparents used
>>>> routinely -- but against concentrated capital and market power. And thjat
>>>> Pynchon knows that. As I wrote 9/2015:
>>>>
>>>> **
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Re Christy Burns' "Postmodern Historiography" (and looking forward to
>>>> Mason's recollections of weavers vs. clothiers in the Golden Valley, 207
>>>> passim)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Once again, in Burns' note 2, we see the Luddites' activities described
>>>> as "the vehement workers' rebellion against the advance of machinery..."
>>>> along with a reference to David Cowart, who (in TP and the Dark Passages of
>>>> History) describes Pynchon's 1984 essay "Is It O.K. to be a Luddite?" as "a
>>>> meditation on distrust of technology."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And once again I wonder why, if that's really what the essay says
>>>> the Luddites were about in 1811-1816, Pynchon would clutter its exposition
>>>> with distractions such as
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "...much of the machinery that steam was coming to drive had already
>>>> long been in place, having in fact been driven by water power since the
>>>> Middle Ages..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "whenever a stocking-frame was found sabotaged - this had been going
>>>> on, sez the Encyclopedia Britannica, since about 1710..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "… the target even of the original assault [Ned Lud's] of 1779, like
>>>> many machines of the Industrial Revolution, was not a new piece of
>>>> technology. The stocking-frame had been around since 1589...
>>>> [and] continued to be the only mechanical means of knitting for hundreds of
>>>> years... And Ned Lud's anger was not directed at the machines, not exactly."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "The knitting machines which provoked the first Luddite disturbances
>>>> had been putting people out of work for well over two centuries."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Golly, those Luddites must have been awfully stupid not to have noticed
>>>> "the advance of machinery" for so long. Or maybe the Luddites' activities
>>>> were not what Burns, Cowart, C.P. Snow, and so many others project upon
>>>> them, but exactly what Pynchon calls them:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "They also saw the machines coming more and more to be the property of
>>>> men who did not work, only owned and hired... [they were] trade unionists
>>>> ahead of their time... It was open-eyed class war."
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> IOW, the Luddite disturbances were actually about a concentration of
>>>> capital arising from changing markets and business models: where previously
>>>> a lot of small local clothiers had dealt with a few weavers each, now a few
>>>> large clothiers -- not neighbors, but increasingly in far-off cities -- had
>>>> much more concentrated power over (and systematically lowered the rates of)
>>>> all the weavers in a district. The Luddites smashed machinery *not* because
>>>> it was new, *not* because it was in and of itself putting them out of work,
>>>> but because it was what they could reach of the bosses' assets.
>>>>
>>>> I recognize that it's much too late to change the consensus that
>>>> "Luddite = anti-technology," but given that TRP was at pains to show that
>>>> he *did* understand what the Luddites were about, it annoys me to see him
>>>> -- and sloppy readings of that essay -- enlisted in the general
>>>> misunderstanding.
>>>>
>>>>  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea
>>>> lly-fought-against-264412/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Typed my way through a brief attempt to understand or at least
>>>>> meditate on these two essays in tandem upon a revisit of them yesterday...
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe not worth your time, but if anybody's interested in reacting or
>>>>> offering any insight, I imagine it'll be worth mine. The maybe-finite
>>>>> resource of my time, that is.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Luddite essay here: http://www.nytimes.com/b
>>>>> ooks/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Sloth here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-
>>>>> sloth.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Luddite essay is '84. Sloth '93.
>>>>>
>>>>> End of the Luddite essay:
>>>>>
>>>>> If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out for will
>>>>> come - you heard it here first - when the curves of research and
>>>>> development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all
>>>>> converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and unpredictable, and even the biggest
>>>>> of brass, let us devoutly hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It is
>>>>> certainly something for all good Luddites to look forward to if, God
>>>>> willing, we should live so long. Meantime, as Americans, we can take
>>>>> comfort, however minimal and cold, from Lord Byron's mischievously
>>>>> improvised song, in which he, like other observers of the time, saw clear
>>>>> identification between the first Luddites and our own revolutionary
>>>>> origins. It begins:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *As the Liberty lads o'er the seaBought their freedom, and cheaply,
>>>>> with blood, So we, boys, weWill die fighting, or live free,And down with
>>>>> all kings but King Ludd!*
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The last two paragraphs of the Sloth essay:
>>>>>
>>>>> Unless the state of our souls becomes once more a subject of serious
>>>>> concern, there is little question that Sloth will continue to evolve away
>>>>> from its origins in the long-ago age of faith and miracle, when daily life
>>>>> really was the Holy Ghost visibly at work and time was a story, with a
>>>>> beginning, middle and end. Belief was intense, engagement deep and fatal.
>>>>> The Christian God was near. Felt. Sloth -- defiant sorrow in the face of
>>>>> God's good intentions -- was a deadly sin.
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems
>>>>> increasingly to define us -- technology. Persisting in Luddite sorrow,
>>>>> despite technology's good intentions, there we'll sit with our heads in
>>>>> virtual reality, glumly refusing to be absorbed in its idle, disposable
>>>>> fantasies, even those about superheroes of Sloth back in Sloth's good old
>>>>> days, full of leisurely but lethal misadventures with the ruthless villains
>>>>> of the Acedia Squad.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Does this seem like an evolution in his thinking from the Luddite
>>>>> essay?
>>>>>
>>>>> He's so--even in his nonfic--exploratory, proceeding by a kind of
>>>>> thinking-at-speed logic, but also ambulatory, wandering, without apparent
>>>>> destination, toying with different ideas, tones...
>>>>>
>>>>> So while I'm both (for better or worse, not really purposely but
>>>>> inevitably) always studying Pynchon for lessons in how to live and think,
>>>>> I'm also always hesitant to decisively identify too much explicit opinion
>>>>> or ideology.
>>>>>
>>>>> But I usually come out of the Luddite essay--or at least look back on
>>>>> it--feeling like he's kind of pro-Luddism, or at least entangling Luddism
>>>>> with certain lineages and inclinations that he might either note with some
>>>>> affection or even identify with. Basically it feels like it has some note
>>>>> of endorsement to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> The sloth essay I usually look back on with the idea that he's
>>>>> offering a kind of defense/endorsement of sloth, a kind of passive
>>>>> resistance to capitalistic/only-forward time, to the treatment of time as a
>>>>> finite and exploitable resource. But actually his movement through it is
>>>>> complicated. It is sometimes the way I remember it. But then it's also
>>>>> other things. He initially frames it as one of Aquinas's seven deadlies.
>>>>> Aquinas calls it acedia. Pynchon seems to formulate his idea of it
>>>>> primarily from this vantage point.
>>>>>
>>>>> Here are the different mentions of acedia in the essay.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) "Acedia" in Latin means sorrow, deliberately self-directed, turned
>>>>> away from God, a loss of spiritual determination that then feeds back on in
>>>>> to the process, soon enough producing what are currently known as guilt and
>>>>> depression, eventually pushing us to where we will do anything, in the way
>>>>> of venial sin and bad judgment, to avoid the discomfort.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) Between Franklin's hectic aphorist, Poor Richard, and Melville's
>>>>> doomed scrivener, Bartleby, lies about a century of early America,
>>>>> consolidating itself as a Christian capitalist state, even as acedia was in
>>>>> the last stages of its shift over from a spiritual to a secular condition.
>>>>>
>>>>> 3) BY the time of "Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street"
>>>>> (1853), acedia had lost the last of its religious reverberations and was
>>>>> now an offense against the economy. Right in the heart of robber-baron
>>>>> capitalism, the title character develops what proves to be terminal acedia.
>>>>>
>>>>> 4) In this century we have come to think of Sloth as primarily
>>>>> political, a failure of public will allowing the introduction of evil
>>>>> policies and the rise of evil regimes, the worldwide fascist ascendancy of
>>>>> the 1920's and 30's being perhaps Sloth's finest hour, though the Vietnam
>>>>> era and the Reagan-Bush years are not far behind. Fiction and nonfiction
>>>>> alike are full of characters who fail to do what they should because of the
>>>>> effort involved. How can we not recognize our world? Occasions for choosing
>>>>> good present themselves in public and private for us every day, and we pass
>>>>> them by. Acedia is the vernacular of everyday moral life. Though it has
>>>>> never lost its deepest notes of mortal anxiety, it never gets as painful as
>>>>> outright despair, or as real, for it is despair bought at a discount price,
>>>>> a deliberate turning against faith in anything because of the inconvenience
>>>>> faith presents to the pursuit of quotidian lusts, angers and the rest.
>>>>>
>>>>> 5) Is Sloth once more about to be, somehow, transcended? Another
>>>>> possibility of course is that we have not passed beyond acedia at all, but
>>>>> that it has only retreated from its long-familiar venue, television, and is
>>>>> seeking other, more shadowy environments -- who knows? computer games, cult
>>>>> religions, obscure trading floors in faraway cities -- ready to pop up
>>>>> again in some new form to offer us cosmic despair on the cheap.
>>>>>
>>>>> And 6) happens in the last paragraph I pasted above. I guess looking
>>>>> at it now it doesn't necessarily seem like TRP's really abandoning or
>>>>> shifting his identification with/endorsement of/sympathy for Luddism. Maybe
>>>>> he's even saying, as we're increasingly defined by technology, Luddism
>>>>> becomes a more logical, potent, holy, common(?), effective(??) kind of
>>>>> sloth than ever before.
>>>>>
>>>>> Really maybe he's saying sloth was once--in the Age of Miracles--an
>>>>> inhibition to a vividly felt/engaged experience of the world, but now, in a
>>>>> less holy world, sloth isn't despairingly turning away from the holy but
>>>>> from the unholy/unholiness.
>>>>>
>>>>> So by a weird kind of divergent and antagonstic evolution, sloth gets
>>>>> decoupled from its "acedia" origins and becomes a resistance to some old
>>>>> ghost-half of itself. Despair against despair. A face and its mirror image
>>>>> turning away from each other.
>>>>>
>>>>> But was it that original coupling of sloth and acedia itself--the
>>>>> turning away from the holy--that led out of the Age of Miracles? Or maybe
>>>>> as Aquinas would have it, it was 1/7 of the story.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you see much movement in TRP's thinking over the 9-yr publication
>>>>> gap between these two things?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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