Squaring TRP's Luddite Essay with His Sloth Essay

Fri Apr 14 18:41:26 CDT 2017

This review of an Amazon bricks-and-mortar bookstore is a very fun
read. It strikes me as the Stepford Wife of bookstores:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-amazon-store-chicago-rev-ent-0403-20170401-column.html

'what human being-based company would install a Kindle Reader in a
book aisle with this encouragement: "Explore books in this aisle on
the Kindle Reader"?'

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 9:15 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm reading about the Great Railroad Strike in 1877, in which workers
> objecting to (repeatedly) lowered wages not only strike but also destroy a
> bunch of railroad equipment.
>
> Does destruction of the means of production (I guess this'd include machines
> in an industrial setting/time) seem like an inevitability to most
> post-industrial labor unrest?
>
> Bartleby (talked about in the Sloth essay) is an increasingly good link
> here...in a capitalistic setting in which one's brain and attention (and
> even morale//complicity) are such integral parts of the means of prod,
> destruction of the mind (through acedia, through despair) shares a direct
> ancestry with Luddite destructiveness?
>
> (Some bullshitting here, if destroying the means or at least factors of
> production is one of the ways labor tends to resist ownership/'s
> exploitation, then the increasing invisibility and interiorization of the
> means of production--an increasingly brain-powered market, one in which
> ownership doesn't know how to distinguish between raw materials and
> labor/human attention, the factory goes inside the head--is maybe one of the
> ways the spirit of capitalism stays elusive, shapeshifty, fundamentally
> toxic to the human. Not all laborers have physical looms to smash, factories
> to raze. The stuff they feel compelled to tear down is inside them. Scary
> shit.)
>
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 5:24 PM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Snow is a useful lever for P's thesis in the Luddite essay.
>> Challenging Snow and defining Luddite, like defining Sloth in the
>> Sloth essay is nearly boilerplate. The essays are pure Pynchon, so
>> they are about him and his talent and his work. Is it OK to be a
>> writer, to write the kind of fiction Pynchon writes? Or is it a sin?
>>
>> And that one Talent, which is death to hide,
>> Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
>> To serve therewith my Maker, and present
>> My true account, lest he, returning, chide
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 4:05 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> > I Agree that sensible clarity is imperfect as a description of anything
>> > P and probably also of what Monte did. But I think his (MD’s) points are
>> > clearly derived from the text, which is what I meant.  What P does do rather
>> > solidly is challenge the Snow essay and the automatic derogatory tone of the
>> > the word Luddite. Beyond that he makes us think about the roles of science
>> > and the humanities with a delightful irreverence.
>> >
>> > As to the the displacement of human labor by robots, what we do know is
>> > that the wealth and political power of the owners has created a new
>> > aristocracy, and a divide that is deep and terrible . That robots have
>> > deepened that divide and will continue to deepen that divide seems
>> > inevitable without a socialist revolution.
>> >
>> >> On Apr 14, 2017, at 9:17 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> One things for certain, the essays don't offer sensible clarity, or
>> >> certainty, or anything for sure. Pynchon doesn't do well in the world
>> >> of take-away talking points and bottom lines. The rabbits hole the
>> >> Luddite and Sloth essays fall into are paradoxically specific about
>> >> Modernism & Technology (yes, I've gone ahead and used the Capital T)
>> >> and the Faustian American Tragedy of Development (Berman,  Chapter
>> >> One), about the Bomb, and ambiguous, even ambivalent about the Comic
>> >> and Romantic Marxian contradictions of capitalism (Berman Chapter
>> >> Two). We fall with Alice and meet a White Rabbit with a copy of Rilke
>> >> who, as a bureaucrat is pitiful, but as myth is terrible and beautiful
>> >> and in Love with Death.
>> >>
>> >> RICHARD LOCKE, in a Review, nailed this. There are advantages to
>> >> living when the wind that the answer is blowing in is all around you.
>> >> I don't take solace in sensible clarity, but to each a peach.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 11:15 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>> Reading through this thread.
>> >>> So far I particularly like the sensible clarity Monte brings to the
>> >>> essay and the intersting tangent Ish produces.  In my mind Pynchon is not
>> >>> talking about the specific technology but the change in status and power
>> >>> structures and more deeply the change in  the sense of identity and self
>> >>> brought by the paradigm that defines 2 primary categories:  owner capitalist
>> >>> ( successful businessman) and worker/replaceable part .
>> >>> While Snow is talking about the artist/tthinker as held back ( from
>> >>> PROGRESS) by lack of scientific knowledge,  Pynchon, scientificly literate,
>> >>> is seeing  a resistance to an imposed social order that offers not so much
>> >>> progess as the legitimately questionable status of parts of a machine, and
>> >>> celebrating the spirit of the "badass”  who resists that assigned status and
>> >>> insists that a better bargain is possible for those who refuse to be owned
>> >>> and operated.
>> >>>
>> >>> I could not help, in reading the article ish posts, feeling that there
>> >>> are quite a few who resist sales pitches, and that when you have the habit
>> >>> of resistance, the algorithms are particularly formulaic and easy to resist.
>> >>> But they obviously  work enough to be very lucrative science and challenge
>> >>> worn out ideas about decision making.   Snow looks for science education to
>> >>> free men from Luddism, but what frees them from the unintended consequences
>> >>> of selling shit as science?
>> >>>
>> >>> As to convergences, so far I have seen no examples of AI, just faster
>> >>> and more multimedia electronic communication and computation.  Robotics
>> >>> seems bent toward a kind of weaponized capital with little restraint on
>> >>> where they get pointed and huge investment in genetics has not turned up
>> >>> nearly what was expected in usable return on investment.   The bombs
>> >>> continue to fall, the factories are still mostly pretty miserable. Does
>> >>> anyone win this Snow/Pynchon argument?
>> >>>
>> >>> I admit I was a bit lazy ( a kind of personal experiment in acedia)and
>> >>> didn’t re read either P essay.
>> >>>
>> >>>> On Apr 13, 2017, at 6:15 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> >>>> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> from NYRB  APRIL 20, 2017 ISSUE
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Tamsin Shaw
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become
>> >>>> inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral
>> >>>> economics are being employed to determine the news we read, the
>> >>>> products we buy, the cultural and intellectual spheres we inhabit,
>> >>>> and
>> >>>> the human networks, online and in real life, of which we are a part.
>> >>>> Aspects of human societies that were formerly guided by habit and
>> >>>> tradition, or spontaneity and whim, are now increasingly the intended
>> >>>> or unintended consequences of decisions made on the basis of
>> >>>> scientific theories of the human mind and human well-being.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/04/20/kahneman-tversky-invisible-mind-manipulators/
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 10:45 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
>> >>>> wrote:
>> >>>>> Things haven't been so heated about automation taking away jobs
>> >>>>> since the
>> >>>>> '60s.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Rather than those technologies based on physical science, the ones
>> >>>>> based on
>> >>>>> the social science are the sine qua non.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Economies of scale for Ludd;
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> The behavioral science of persuasion for us moderns.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 6:18 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
>> >>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Wot Monte sed.
>> >>>>>> There's also been a massive resurgence of "Robots are Coming to
>> >>>>>> Take Your
>> >>>>>> Jobs" stories in the media of late. Same thing - displaces the
>> >>>>>> responsibility away from the businesses preferring automation and
>> >>>>>> the
>> >>>>>> minimisation of human labor costs onto a mythic army of androids
>> >>>>>> we've been
>> >>>>>> primed to imagine by fiction and film. It's the same as explaining
>> >>>>>> offshore
>> >>>>>> outsourcing as "Bangladeshis are Coming to Take Your Job."
>> >>>>>> I think classifying Pynchon as a Systems Novelist makes even more
>> >>>>>> sense
>> >>>>>> when you read his essays, rather than the fiction.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 12:44 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 / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l