Squaring TRP's Luddite Essay with His Sloth Essay

[Mark Kohut]

John, 

Maybe you read me too quickly? See the last sentence with the continuum adumbrated.

More to say when I have time, but there is too much epiphanic ambiguity in Pynchon for me to label him essentially a humanist. 

I, by the way, dislike reducing him to graspable labels, perhaps as we all do, and "systems novelist" hurts my mind, but everyone's mileage varies, of course. 



Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 13, 2017, at 8:58 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Mark, I reckon there's a resistance to reading Pynchon as a humanist
> and I'll admit I have a bit of that resistance in me. Up until and
> especially including Gravity's Rainbow there's so much that seems more
> post-humanist or trans-humanist in the novels, potentially even
> anti-humanist in the positioning of small flat characters against a
> world or even universal ecosystem in which the weather is most
> definitely not a projection of anyone's feelings. Hence the reams of
> scholarship on how his form and themes and whatever is a reaction to
> the insularity of the modern psychological humanist realist novel.
> It's hard to say those books are about what it means to be human when
> even know it seems hard to comprehend how one human wrote them.
> But then all that comes after GR troubles those readings... in really
> interesting ways. I largely see the humanist project as about defining
> and hence drawing a boundary around the human which I can't square
> with Pynchon at all, but at the same time there's a shit-ton of stuff
> in there that very much supports what you're saying and I agree with
> you 100 percent on it.
> 
>> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 8:22 PM, 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-really-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/books/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 sea
>>>>>> Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
>>>>>> So we, boys, we
>>>>>> Will 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?
>> 
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l