BEg2 Chap 8: Supernatural Intrusions

[Joseph Tracy]

Some people , especially those america lasters are probably just not getting those subtle dstinctions of anglo colonialism. 
  The BOMB. Only destructive. Not really evil at all. Sheeesh why didn’t I think of that. Just a planet with green stuff and animals and shit. Imean I’mgoing to die, … maybe, so why shouldn’t billions of years of evolution be burnt to a crisp to keep America First. Damn fuckin straight. Don’t you love straw men? I do. Just a match, a quick breath  and whooosh.

> On Dec 13, 2021, at 1:25 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Jeez-whiz, and it's not just China!
> 
> I'd give this list's cohort of America Lasters some homework re: the
> Empire *Upon
> Which the Sun Never Set (among others) throughout the *19th century and
> beyond, out both ends, from slave ship to cotton field to diamond mine to
> the killing fields of drug war and strategic famine and applied racial
> "science" to etc, etc, etc, before they spend another moment in that state
> of blessed easy leftish innocence that sees the USA as the be all and end
> all of EVILE in world history...
> 
> With the caveat that they DID (in many ways) produce The BOMB, which is the
> point upon which our species' ending may ultimately pivot, some day soon.
> But I would argue that, technically, while destructive, that's not really
> "EVILE" per se... unless you see Imperial Japan and Fascist Germany as the
> Good Guys.
> 
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 9:29 AM Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Joseph,
>> 
>> Heh—this ain't my first rodeo, pardner! I wasn't taught debate by Mr.
>> Farkas just to fall for the ol' Motte-and-Baily trick! I tilted a humorous
>> joust towards your bailey: "The Bill or Rights was suspended," not some
>> indefensible motte: "Extradition and torture don't matter." Of course I
>> believe that Western rights can be, and have been, infringed, subverted,
>> and perverted, and of course I believe torture matters. I was teasing you
>> about your hyperbole, the same I would expect someone to do if I said
>> something like "Rush is the greatest band ever." Just with less, you know,
>> moral high ground? And also, if you genuinely believe that China needed the
>> United States to develop a surveillance state dedicated to controlling its
>> citizens, I urge you to read about Imperial China long before the Canton
>> system. It's pretty grim stuff. (The first Opium War is one of favorite
>> historical subjects. It's like: "Oh, oh, oh, you are *all* so terrible!")
>> 
>> But on to the heart of your post—thank you for clarifying your ideas. I
>> understand you much better now, and I really appreciate your "layers"
>> analogy. It offers a nice vocabulary to discuss Pynchon. For instance, I
>> agree with you that the third, mythic later is detuned in "Bleeding Edge"
>> compared to many of his other books. And there's some weird interplay
>> between the second and third layers: the Naser? I mean....come on? Which
>> creates a strange tension in the novel for me.
>> 
>> For instance: I accept mechanical ducks in "Mason & Dixon," and Godzilla
>> in "Vineland." I can even accept ghosts in "Bleeding Edge." But stiff like
>> the Naser raises my eyebrows: if this is *real,* if the Naser and people
>> fleeing from it are meant to be taken literally in the world of the book,
>> how seriously are we meant to take the characters? It feels different than,
>> say, "Against the Day," which clearly operates in a magical space. Or the
>> time travel in "Bleeding Edge"—but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll wait
>> until those chapters to raise those questions. Some good stuff coming down
>> the road in the novel, once you clear all these opening chapters. (Which I
>> still enjoy.)
>> 
>> And I just wanted to pull this quote out, because I really like it:
>> "Whether Pynchon believes M&D’s line was really a colonial violation of
>> telluric patterns or just a means of land theft, we know he has M&D wrestle
>> with the ethical dimensions of what they are doing and uses supernatural
>> stories to amplify such issues." <--yes! Well said.
>> 
>> Anyway, thanks for taking the time to clarify. And I would be interested
>> in reading your essay, if you send it along!
>> 
>> —Quail
>> 
>> On 12/11/21, 10:07 PM, "Joseph Tracy" <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 
>>    easier questions first- Pynchon readers seem less enthralled with BE
>> as a whole, and I think this is part of why. We like the weirdness and the
>> sublime quality of hanging out for a few days or weeks with Ball lightning,
>> talking across that usually unbridgeable gap.  I think the confrontation
>> with the abyss combined with 9-11 and ithe loss of privacy is also
>> uncomfortably close to home. Throw in the weird scene and video  with the
>> shoulder fired missile, and who wants to think about it all. Look what it
>> stirred up here.
>>    Abyss- all of the above with the full impact of all that we do not
>> know.
>>    I don't think you could take things any more seriously than GR.
>>    China's system was born here, but they have caught up.
>>    The redcoats have not come to my house directly but they are turning
>> over Julian for more torture and that matters.
>> 
>>    Less supernatural as in missing the third layer that is in most of his
>> novels. As you know, because the story, I’m fairly certain, came from your
>> web page, Pynchon once compared his writing to one of those medical texts
>> with overlappable transparent layers.  As a stained glass conservationist I
>> sometimes have worked with Tiffany and Lafarge Windows with multiple layers
>> and the whole idea has affected my own art and the way I look at TP and
>> other fiction. I see 3 fundamental layers( I have an essay somewhere if you
>> are interested)with the more direct comments of the author himself being a
>> kind of 4th layer and the readers a 5th in the sense that like all writers
>> he wants to connect. The base , or at least fundamental to the 3 layers is
>> history itself and Pynchon tries hard to make this accurate and full of
>> timely details. My presumption here is not that history can be accurately
>> told but that it actually happened and is a proper setting for writing
>> about the  human experience and maybe some other shit too. The second layer
>> I call the plausible fictive, but is also called realism naturalism or just
>> fiction. This is the primary characters and their imagined lives along with
>> fictional towns , bars, mayonnaise attacks etc..  Still pretty normal
>> stuff. The third layer is the supernatural, which almost always has a
>> mythic dimension. This is why I referred to Pugnax, the Chums, Thanatoids,
>> etc. These could be dismissed as silly but fun storytelling devices but I
>> think there is more to it. It adds a layer that has always been part of
>> human consciousness and treats it as something perfectly normal with real
>> effects on other layers. Whether Pynchon believes M&D’s line was really a
>> colonial violation of telluric patterns or just a means of land theft, we
>> know he has M&D wrestle with the ethical dimensions of what they are doing
>> and uses supernatural stories to amplify such issues.
>>       That was probably too big of an answer but this third supernatural
>> layer is seriously reduced in BE and a more psychological approach takes a
>> central role. I think it makes the writing  just a bit less lively, less
>> fun,  and less multi-dimensional but Pynchon's other emphasis is on the
>> role of computer tech and the web and I am suggesting that maybe this
>> forfeiting of the supernatural and mythic weird comes from a sense that
>> screens  is where we have turned our attention and that in doing so  we may
>> well have forfeited a vital dimension.  Not only that but we have forfeited
>> it to a logic system that  easily serves  as system controls for a ruling
>> class that may be socipathic at a fundamental level, and also  a logic
>> sytem that is not part of biological complexity, moral compassion, or real
>> joy in living . I personally doubt that biology or physics  or
>> consciousness is built up from binary logic. I like computers as a very
>> powerful  tool, but like you and  Cassidy certain things or spaces or
>> energy systems, movies, etc. feel as you said ’colonized’ and while I try
>> to face my own shadow some things I just walk away from or dig into my
>> internal love mantras and wait for some light.  Is there evil? Even with my
>> inclination toward Taoism I can’t dismiss it as easily as I used to.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Dec 11, 2021, at 7:17 PM, Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> The suspension of the Bill of Rights was the worst—I was shocked to
>> find I had to quarter Redcoats in my apartment! They really drank me out of
>> house and home. Couldn't make a decent pot ocoffee to save their lives.
>>> 
>>> But kidding aside, while your post contains all the eloquence I've
>> come to enjoy from your writing -- I'm a sucker for "chthonic" -- I'm not
>> sure I'm following a few of your points, which is likely my fault. Just to
>> clarify: You feel the book is less supernatural because Pynchon is taking
>> things more seriously, because he's dealing with recent events? Or because
>> he feels modern people, or perhaps his characters, have lost touch with the
>> mythic? And when you say the Deep Web (via DeepArcher) draws people "toward
>> the abyss that is an inevitable part of the subconscious," do you mean
>> loneliness? The self? Depression? Death? All of the above?
>>> 
>>> I think I get what you are saying—perhaps in a Gurdjieff/Watts kind
>> of way—but here's something about the Deep Web in Bleeding Edge that still
>> feels more sinister to me than the Dark Night of the Soul, perhaps
>> more—colonized? Or maybe this is just one of the Pynchon things I'll never
>> really "get." (Yes, I admit, there are parts of "Against the Day" that
>> still leaving me scratching my head.)
>>> 
>>> And finally, what do you mean by "What readers do with that is
>> interesting. Pynchon fans seem distinctly less enthralled." Less enthralled
>> with exploring darkness, or just less enthralled with BE as a whole?
>>> 
>>> Anyway, I certainly agree with you that our "planet wars" have
>> claimed enough victims, and we should treasure human contact. Well said.
>> (Though I reckon that China may be offended by your claiming that the US
>> has the "largest civilian surveillance system ever imagined." You should
>> really give them more credit, they're trying so hard!)
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> —Quail
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 12/11/21, 6:02 PM, "Joseph Tracy" <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>   But I do have that question for everyone: how literal do you take
>> Bleeding Edge?
>>> 
>>>   Good question, especially because, as you point out, there is
>> distinctly less intrusion of the supernatural or mythic weird than in any
>> other Pynchon Novel: no talking ball lightning, no chasing harmonicas into
>> the underworld, no Thanatoids, lovestruck mecahincal ducks, Pugnax, Vheissu
>> etc.
>>>   I mean there is the cosmic bike messenger and in this very
>> chapter a psychic bladder function, but these are, let’s face it, just not
>> the same. Later there are ghosts but even those can be interpreted as
>> psychological illusions or alternately insights.  It is as though the
>> dreaded nuclear armed V2 had finally hit and the worst it could do was
>> bring down towers and kill a few thousand more victims of the planet wars.
>> Which by the time BE was being written had produced more planet wars and a
>> hundred fold increase in innocent victims. Well innocent in that most
>> people don’t actively drop bombs on other people and wouldn’t even donate
>> to the bombers if the national bomb campaigns relied on volunteer
>> donations.
>>>      The human suffering is all too real too, and other realities
>> have come with it: the sudden turn to patriot act paranoia, the drone wars,
>> the suspension of the Bill of Rights and the institution of the largest
>> civilian surveillance system ever imagined.
>>>     Maybe TP  has brought his readers out of a world on which the
>> people interact powerfully with the mythic because that is his sense of
>> what is happening. I have the feeling he is not that thrilled with a world
>> so severed, both from the mystical and from the multicultural, multivalent
>> social hodgepodge that does not so easily lend itself to the manipulations
>> of binary code and binary politics. Maxine is the most interactive human in
>> P’s writings and what she is is the normal social experience of a great
>> deal of human history. She gives us the big picture view that  cyberspace
>> promises but can’t deliver.  Everyone is different, looking for meaning,
>> respect, everyone is struggling with the effects of social isolation and
>> lack of power to stop a growing plutocracy, marital and family breakups,
>> predators, bad habits.
>>>      The deep web functions not so much like a balloon ride into
>> new dimensions of understanding, or even a cthonic confrontation with the
>> deep forces of history and myth like Slothrop’s toilet adventure. It draws
>> people toward the abyss that is an inevitable part of the subconscious. It
>> is lonely and we all must enter eventually.  What readers do with that is
>> interesting. Pynchon fans seem distinctly less enthralled. I have mixed
>> feelings. I been there plenty and the main result is I want to treasure
>> every human contact.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Dec 11, 2021, at 4:04 PM, Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I liked Myst. I am a hardcore video game player, and I still love
>> open worlds the best. Myst was a forerunner to so many great things, even
>> stuff like GTA and Skyrim. Great game.
>>>> 
>>>> Which brings me to Cassidy. I keep re-reading that section, and
>> even though I read "Bleeding Edge" when it first came out, maybe I just
>> don't remember—what is there about the abyss in Deep Archer? It's often
>> spoken of in mystical terms. I think Cassidy gives the first impression of
>> that, beyond Maxine's initial "gee wow," that is. Cassidy remarks:
>>>> 
>>>> “Hard to explain. It was all just coming from somewhere, for about
>> a day and a half I felt I was duked in on forces outside my normal
>> perimeter, you know? Not scared, just wanted to get it over with, wrote the
>> file, did the Java, didn’t look at it again. Next thing I remember is one
>> of them saying holy shit it’s the edge of the world”
>>>> 
>>>> Pynchon loves supernatural spaces, and I think he's strongly
>> suggesting that the Deep Web—or video games, or Myst, etc.—has the capacity
>> to be an Other World. And not just Gibsonian cyberspace—or maybe it's just
>> that after all?
>>>> 
>>>> Maybe because weird fiction/horror is my favorite genre, I'm
>> fascinated with the intrusions of the supernatural—or if not the
>> supernatural, then the sublime?—in "Bleeding Edge." I mean, it's one thing
>> in M&D, AtD, etc., but this seems to be Pynchon's most "realistic," or
>> perhaps "historical," book. Sure, there are some things that suggest an
>> alternate, wackier universe—the Naser, proösmia, Maxine being ok with being
>> a stripper—but then again, there's something even weirder going on, right?
>>>> 
>>>> Anyway, I won’t go into any future events just yet, I'll wait until
>> we get there. But it's something to keep an eye on as the book develops.
>> But I do have that question for everyone: how literal do you take Bleeding
>> Edge?
>>>> 
>>>> —Quail
>>>> 
>>>> PS: Sorry I know this post is all jumbled with ideas and not
>> lucidly written, but I'm on my third Abelour.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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