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)

[Mark Kohut]

I'll repeat. 'rueful acquiescence' might apply to Vineland, P's failure of
the sixties ideals novel but not the others, in my opinion.

That 'whole body of criticism' seldom says what you write in the reductive
way you characterize it, imo, but if and when it does, I think it is
wrong--incomplete at least.

GR and AtD are historical novels after all, so of course history is what it
has been but I say Pynchon always embodies the belief in the texts that it
could have
been different. Those richly ambiguous endings give the game away as well
as the vision of ways of the good life, beyond machine-like historical
determinism in all of them. "Fuck the war, they were in love"
not the least. Lot 49 can be read as Pynchon's Kropotkin hope novel, I
suggest. It is all in there and THAT ending.....And AtD, with all those
attitudes to life from
everybody and we actually get to see History being made live in this novel,
so to speak, as the Chums and Chumettes create a world together.

My 2c.

Mark



On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 10:52 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Rorty’s description of rueful acqiescence is not an uncommon reading among
> Pynchon readers and critics. There is a whole body of criticism that
> perceives GR, ATD, BE in particular as describing a machine like momentum
> to western dominated civilization that allows little hope of change or even
> real control of these meaning-destructive , nature-destructive and therefor
> self-destructive habits. Heroes who confront this machine reveal its
>  hypcritical or simply insane nature, but there is little apart from
> personal dignity available from resisting it. The heroes journey ends up
> moving toward escape, self preservation, avoiding  pointless self
> immolation.
>  One thing that I will assert with intensity is that Pynchon does not tell
> his readers what to think. He thinks and expresses authorial ideas ,  his
> characters think and act, and history and fictions unfold but where many
> authors seek to direct our emotions and interpretations, Pynchon leaves
> that to the reader. Its a very democratic structure. If we come away
> strengthened in determination to fight for change or expose insanity and
> criminality the novels will act as warning  about what we are up aagainst
> but  will not deter us and will give us some good company.  That probably
> is better than rueful acqiescence but living in this time I find it
> impossible not to understand and feel emotionally exactly what Rorty is
> saying.
>     I just read a biography of Peter Kropotkin, who was a tirelessly
> hopeful believer in humankind’s capacity to move toward cooperation and
> peace. What made his history most interesting was understanding that the
> Bolshevik violence in seizing the revolution was not inevitable; there was
> chance and shifting ideas and the outcome might have been different. The
> sad fact was that Kropotkin faltered in his own opposition to war at this
> critical time.  Right now the empire is faltering in a period of similar
> uncertainty, One of the biggest un-predictable factors will be climactic,
> ecological  and social devastations that will be amplified by the resulting
> mass migrations. Will new models of how to manage human survival and
> cooperation emerge? I do not think it is impossible and tend to see more
> hope there in tumultuous change seized by local communities and new
> national alliances than in attempts at reform. So far reform is just a
> release valve to keep people believing some kind of new new deal is
> possible. It might happen in Iceland but America is the heart of the
> problem; we are mad with war and  oligarchy, dreams of a universal police
> state,  sexy entertainment and denial.
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 29, 2021, at 5:47 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Rorty is writing about fictions, placing Pychon's under the judgment of
> "rueful acquiescence'
> which I did not think you would agree with....but , wrong I guess.
>
> His words about the situation in the real world one can agree with yet
> also find Pynchon's novels
> not  "rueful acquiescence" in ultimate judgment. IMHO.
>
> On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 5:03 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Just  being emphatic about what Rorty calls plausible extrapolation. I am
>> hardly alone or apart from many serious analysts and journalists.  Let me
>> point out that it was not long ago several p-listers were sure Mueller was
>> going to expose Trump collusion with Russia while I and Journalist thinkers
>> I admire said it would fizzle for lack of evidence because it was built out
>> of a Hillary psyop. Plenty of crimes for Trump or Bush or Obama to account
>> for but that was obviously a dead end if you looked at the quality of the
>> evidence.
>>
>> On Oct 29, 2021, at 1:13 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Puzzling to me from you, Joseph, with all the powerful stuff you find and
>> say in Pynchon. But, as we know, I don't understand you.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 1:11 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>>> The correlation between how politicians vote and who funds their
>>> campaigns and the direct hand of corportions in writing legislation makes
>>> it the only plausible explanation. Rueful acquiescence seems accurate.
>>> Even our children for sale without much of a fight.
>>>
>>> > On Oct 29, 2021, at 8:56 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
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 1:14 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> “I should like to make it sound attractive by dubbing it ‘American’,”
>>> he
>>> >> writes with his usual dash of irony, “construing it as the idea
>>> common to
>>> >> Emerson and Whitman, the idea of a new, self-creating community,
>>> united not
>>> >> by knowledge of the same truths, but by sharing the same generous,
>>> >> inclusivist, democratic hopes.”
>>> >> --
>>> >> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>