NP but Richard Rorty, yet could gloss (some of) visionary Pynchon, yes? (This from a review in LA Review of Books about new collection of lectures)

[rich]

the only thing I would question is that this shadowy, behind the scenes
government knows what it's doing. the true crackpots seem to think they
know what they're doing. Frankly, I'm not sure which is worse

rich

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 8:58 AM Heikki R <
situations.journeys.comedy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rorty, however, seemed to regard Pynchon as something of an
> anti-Emerson/Whitman/Dewey...
>
> "Snow Crash capitalizes on the widespread belief that giant corporation,
> and a shadowy behind-the-scenes government acting as an agent for the
> corporations, now make all the important decisions.  This belief finds
> popular expression in popular thrilers like Richard Condon's The Manchurian
> Candidate and Winter Kills, as well as in more ambitious works like Thomas
> Pynchon's Vineland and Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost.  The view that the
> visible government is just a false front is a plausible extrapolation from
> the fact that we are living in a second Gilded Age: even Mark Twain might
> have been startled by the shamelessness with which our politicians now sell
> themselves. Novels like Stephenson's, Condon's, and Pynchon's are novels
> not of social protest but of rueful acquiescence in the end of American
> hopes...."
>
> From The Rorty Reader, ed. Voparil and Bernstein, Wiley-Blackwell 2010, p.
> 373
>
> /pynchon-l <https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>
>