Re: My Reddit comments on Webb’s funeral

[Mark Kohut]

Labor is the turd pile of commerce is an expressive phrase. Good one, Ian.
it means what it says. Commerce happens in the social world, and if the
first words of "Shit, Money & the Word" mean anything and we know they do,
then Labor is treated like shit. Whatever Pynchon thinks about unions in
general (and over historical time) I think he would agree with
this---remember alicewellintown, "it's about work"....as I would have
thought you would have too given your defense of unions for workers.

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

>  Labor is the turdpile of commerce. What does that mean?
>
> If there are to be markets, why shouldn’t people be able to bargain
> collectively as part of establishing market values?
>
> 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. 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.   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 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
>