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]

That Pynchon doesn't tell us what to think, in the usual understanding of
that in fiction as I hear it, is so true.

That concept was what led me to find fault with Rorty's way of framing with
which I evidently differ with Joseph over. Novels that 'tell', polemical
novels, novels
full of essayistic prose on topics of the novel's day, are failed or weak
novels, I aver. (I have just read all I can take of one
for a Book Group; all the right positions, esp on women in this one--by a
writer I can't read, Ms Allende (I didn't pick the book. I may have helped
keep
members of this group from reading more of her although many already had.
But since changing anyone's mind is hard, I'm just full of myself, I bet)).
So I digress.

This is why I wrote what I did on "protest' novels and something Rorty
gives no evidence of getting in the snippet we have (or would differ with
me on)---thanks Heikki; gotta
get the Rorty Reader; have recently been arguing about Rorty's supposed
philosophical pragmatism with someone. I'm
on the NAY side of that argument and, since it is a contentious issue about
Rorty, my best line is that Rorty is the
Schrodinger's cat of real pragmatism.

Anyway, the great Richard Rorty must differ with Nobodaddy on this: He
somehow thinks that there can be novels of art that are social protest
novels. I say there can hardly be.
I say Vineland is the best of the novels on his theme he writes of.
They flatten and date themselves. And declare themselves prose, maybe
effective prose but seldom literature.

* Rueful acquiescence within the context of the novel but what about that
ending? Little rue there. Peter Coviello's
*Vineland Reread *is very good on the character-creation in Vineland, what
is beyond the ineluctability of the machine world. I recommend it. Again.

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
>>>
>>
>>
>