Pynchon's Russia--US

[Mark Kohut]

I will just say that Pynchon's Russians are part of his vision of history *in
his fiction*. Right? Their leaders and emblematic others---spies vs spies?
In AtD, Russian citizen chums rose with the American/ Western Chums between
the wars.

Regular Russians we know then or now seem to me to be....not the Russians
he means fictionally.
Except in the Le Carre both sides way.....



On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 8:45 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> OK, I’ll bite. The general impression P gives of Russians is cynical
> acceptance of corruption where resistance takes the form of monkey
> wrenching and watching out for yourself and those you care about. There is
> a certain feeling of waiting for big systems to fail even more completely
> apart, but only  the barest hints of  hope for positive revolutionary
> changes, and I may be imagining that. Could be interesting to look more
> closely at the texts themselves. There is a weird consistency between the
> Russians in GR and BE, no?
>   The Russians I am closest to are different. Very honest, good to their
> employees, believers in democracy, intensely family oriented, but lots of
> individual differences. I think P leaves out the weird influence of Russian
> Orthodoxy on many Russsians in the Russians he chooses to personify.
> > On Jan 31, 2019, at 3:42 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> >
> > And, of course, in GR...
> >
> > Am 31.01.2019 um 21:41 schrieb Mark Kohut:
> >> And in AtD....
> >> On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 3:20 PM Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de <mailto:thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>> wrote:
> >>    The ending of VL comes to mind. And, of course, the Russians in BE.
> >>    Could be interesting to have a closer look.
> >>    Here is Allen Ginsberg on the subject:
> >>    "America you don’t really want to go to war.
> >>    America its them bad Russians.
> >>    Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
> >>    The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants
> to
> >>    take our cars from out our garages.
> >>    Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants
> >>    our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our
> >>    fillingstations.
> >>    That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black
> >>    niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
> >>    America this is quite serious.
> >>    America this is the impression I get from looking in the television
> set.
> >>    America is this correct?"
> >>    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b41f119f
> >>    (Why the peculiar grammar? At the beginning, with "Them Russians", it
> >>    appears to be a satirical jibe at not particularly bright
> US-Americans
> >>    watching the news on the TV set, but "That no good" is Black
> >>    Vernacular,
> >>    no? And "Her"?)
> >>    For those in the Midwest: Keep warm!
> >>    Am 28.01.2019 um 12:43 schrieb Mark Kohut:
> >>     > First, sorry that this scan of the picture is sideways....I
> >>    thought I could
> >>     > turn it right side up but I don't know how.Just turn your head a
> >>    little--or
> >>     > your phone/computer, haha.
> >>     >   Second, remember *The Realist *rag?---if you are old enough.
> >>     > Third and most substantively, and the reason I scanned this,
> >>    think about P
> >>     > and his oeuvre-length geopolitical doubling of the USA and
> >>    Russia-- and
> >>     > here, in 1962, The Cold War about to have its hottest
> >>    moments....and what a
> >>     > cartoon, eh?
> >>     >
> >>     >  From a paperback of the sixties, THE NEW RADICALS, a collection.
> >>     >
> >>     >
> >>     > Please open the attached document. It was scanned and sent to you
> >>    using a
> >>     > Xerox WorkCentre. For more information on Xerox products and
> >>    solutions,
> >>     > please visit http://www.xerox.com.
> >>     > --
> >>     > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>     >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
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>