Re: My Reddit comments on Webb’s funeral

Wed Dec 29 12:39:13 UTC 2021

On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 2:07 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
There is a huge leap from these union leaders in this instance treated this
> union person badly to all unions forgot who they worked for.

Right.  Pynchon just happened to write about this random only-one-person in
this only-one-instance because it’s not like something you should make it
court case over it.  I mean, Jeeze!  Get over it!

There is more to union and union busting activity in ATD than this scene.
> Pynchonis not a hagiographer of any movement, organization, nation or much
> of anything. People in Thomas Pynchon books tend to show their entire
> character and behavior  including flaws.

Right!  And Unions are just PEOPLE!  Right?  I mean,  like,   EVERYBODY
makes mistakes!   Whataya gunna do about it!

Unions and revolutionaries in ATD are acting in human response to violent
> authoritarianism. The plutes the politicians, the media the mercenaries
> and the banks are organized to get what they can, and the unions,
> anarchists,  some individualists, and others form a resistance to those
> authoritarions that directly limit tthe dignity and value of their lives.

IMO

Oh!  THIS is what we’ve all been waiting for!

Trying to argue that Pynchon is anti-union is a lonely position in the body
> of academic response to P’s writing, and picking out this example as proof
> is

missing the forest for a shrub.

> On Dec 28, 2021, at 10:29 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Mmhm. Nice, David. Very nice. Fine job of catching the nuances of the
> individualist as a union man. Webb’s complexity as a character and the
> historical scenes that aligned him with the working stiffs of the American
> west during the bad old days is a particularly captivating ‘chapter’ in the
> larger narrative. What happened to the unions, I hear P asking
> rhetorically, they forgot who they worked for responds the family left
> behind to wander adrift through the fragments of the world. Commitment is a
> cesspool in the workers’ world, and labor is the turdpile of commerce.
> Flush after scented flush. The union, to pull a little Norris into the mix,
> is an arm of the octopus. Given enough time and space I could run out
> metaphors to mix into the mess.
> >
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Dec 28, 2021, at 5:13 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I’ve cleaned it up a bit, but my conclusion is the same:  Pynchon’s
> >> portrayal of Unions in ATD is not even close to an endorsement.  Also,
> the
> >> funny thing is that (with these sections being discussed in this and
> last
> >> weeks’ reading schedule) no moderator even commented on Webb’s being
> >> shuffled away by the Union when he started showing neediness, or the
> Union
> >> not even sending flowers to his funeral.  I think that says something
> about
> >> modern-day perceptions of the usefulness of unions.
> >> —————————-
> >>
> >> Lately there’s been some “side” attention being paid to ATD over at the
> >> P-List as they pursue their group read of Bleeding Edge. As they try to
> >> understand Late Capitalism in BE, speculations are being made about why
> >> nobody from the Union attended Webb’s funeral, and somebody remembered
> >> Mayva and Reef’s exchange:
> >>
> >> p.215 They stood huddled together in Lone Tree Cemetery, the miners’
> >> graveyard at the end of town, Mayva, Lake, Frank, and Reed, beneath the
> >> great peaks and behind them the long, descending trace of Bridal Veil
> Falls
> >> whispering raggedly into the cold sunlight. Webb’s life and work had
> come
> >> to this.
> >>
> >> She [Mayva] was quiet [...] “Thought the Union would’ve sent flowers at
> >> least.”
> >>
> >> “Not them.” It is just the meanest kind of disrespect, Reef thought, and
> >> fuck all these people.
> >>
> >> That seems like a pretty harsh portrayal by Pynchon of the Union. Webb
> >> literally gave his whole heart and soul to the Union. And for his love
> of
> >> the Union, he was brutally, slowly, and sadistictly tortured, and
> finally,
> >> unmercifully allowed to die, his body dumped and displayed at for
> ridicule
> >> in an earthly Hell. And, then, at his funeral in the miners’ cemetery,
> he
> >> is show “the meanest kind of disrespect” by the Union.
> >>
> >> So, “over there” at the BE group they are asking “Why?” Had Webb’s
> >> unsolicited terrorism over the years soured the Union on him (now that
> they
> >> were “established?”) Maybe everyone was afraid to show up, to be put on
> >> “their” list of funeral attendees? But the text doesn’t hint at any of
> >> those reasons. We’re never actually told if the Union knew Webb was that
> >> secret bomber, or if any Union had ever (in either real or fictional
> life)
> >> publicly opposed bombings supporting the Union. But that seems like
> >> grasping at straws.
> >>
> >> Backing up a bit with Webb’s story, we learn that Mayva had recently
> left
> >> Webb, hoping to watch over Lake, who seemed to be personally
> floundering.
> >> After his death the two discuss Webb. Mayva regrets not having gone
> back to
> >> Webb, the three of them leaving together for “some place those people
> don’t
> >> go, don’t even know about, down out of these god-damned mountains, could
> >> have found us a patch of land —.”  But Lake reminds her, “We were never
> >> that important to him, Mamma. He had his almighty damn Union, that’s
> what
> >> he loved. If he loved anything.”
> >>
> >> And immediately the narrator tells us:
> >>
> >> P.192. “IF IT WAS LOVE, it was less than two-way. With no more
> respectable
> >> family-man dodge to hide behind, Webb sought the embrace of Local 63,
> >> which, alarmed at the vehemence of his need, decided there ought to be
> some
> >> distance between him and the Union, and suggested he shift over into the
> >> Uncompahgre for a while, to the Torpedo workings."
> >>
> >> Again, the Union is shown as completely uncaring about Webb, finding his
> >> neediness “alarming,” and shuffling him away, out of sight. But,
> >> importantly, Webb admits here that he’d been hiding behind all that time
> >> behind a “respectable family-man dodge,” now gone away with Mayva and
> Lake.
> >> But who was he hiding FROM behind that dodge?
> >>
> >> Well, Webb tells us what IS HIS TRUE LOVE with this confession: Now that
> >> Webb had lost the last two of “his own family, the ones [the women] that
> >> ought to’ve mattered most,” it now seemed “as if with the boys all out
> >> there in the wind his place was now [now, having been left alone without
> >> the women] out there in the wind too.” And he figures that his “chances
> of
> >> running into each other [with the boys] again were better out there
> than in
> >> some domestic interior” [as he’d been all those years with Mayva].
> >>
> >> In this context, his having played the “respectable family-man dodge to
> >> hide behind” was him *dodging from himself*, not the Company. And thus
> Webb
> >> admits that his “real love” WAS the Union, and it WAS being a free and
> wild
> >> man “out there in the wind” like his sons. One could ask which of *these
> >> two* were his real love, his being out there free in the wind, or his
> love
> >> of the ideals of Union brotherhood, and clearly the answer would be the
> >> former: his freedom. But if the Union was also a dodge, it at least
> >> represented his attempt to maintain *some* personal agency and
> self-respect
> >> while living in this capitalist world.
> >>
> >> But then we see “Webb’s life and work had come to this.” This is truly a
> >> sad end. And it’s FAR from a ringing endorsement of Unions as the
> solution
> >> to a person’s delemna in these Late Capital Days.
> >>
> >> David Morris
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>