Squaring TRP's Luddite Essay with His Sloth Essay

Thu Apr 13 11:18:17 CDT 2017

did you hear the one about the luddite, the uber driver and the monkey from
2001?

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 5:08 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
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