Squaring TRP's Luddite Essay with His Sloth Essay

[David Morris]

"The Zone" is always vital yet inherently fragile and temporary.

David Morris

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 8:37 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170413/bf4ff883/attachment.html>