COL 49 group read CH 6 mid section

[Joseph Tracy]

This is true. I did not mean direct as in non-fiction or even straight ”historic fiction”. I like the way Pynchon tells  entertaining and tragic and crazy stories and asks us to think about the historic references in many different ways. What I meant was more akin to other work where the V type forces were often historic or fairly obvious references. : the V2 rocket program in Nazi Germany, Big tech firms and 9-11 in BE, Nixon and the California far right in VL, and IV,  the Paxton gang  and Slavers along with the actual M&D-line in M&D.  What I meant was COL49 has a lot of plausible deniability regarding any reference to the JFK killing , but also builds around a power struggle  with and murder of the lawful ruler within 3 years of that event, and that this extra measure of  built-in deniability came from a reasonable fear on P’s part. There are other biographical facts that point in this direction, so it does not seem an unreasonable possibility.

I try not to reiterate a definition of every term and certainly do not mean or want a polemic alone. But polemics are not always dead IMO.   P's essay on the Luddites had a strong polemical quality and I do enjoy that; same with the intro to 1984. The famous quote from GR about "the real business of war..." is a polemical argument.   
Or this:
“It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted…secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology…by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, “Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,” but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more…The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms—it was only staged to look that way—but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite..”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow <https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/866393>

> On Aug 1, 2024, at 4:35 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Pynchon is an artist....the "direct approach' is almost never art....the 7
> types of ambiguity are
> erased......a "direct approach' is a dead polemic....
> 
> On Thu, Aug 1, 2024 at 2:40 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 7:53 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I suggest Pynchon was very nervous about a direct approach  and that
>>> those concerns were well founded. Every student of history knows the
>>> dangers of tangling with empires.
>>> 
>> 
>> You make a good case - I have some elaborate pseudo-biographical points of
>> agreement, and a few mild differences
>> 
>> 
>> In agreement -
>> 
>> Rev’d Cherrycoke in M&D had to ship out after becoming known as a writer of
>> pamphlets critical of the Establishment at that time
>> 
>> His career thereafter took a different course, and perhaps his experience
>> changed his viewpoint to one more like that AA prayer about learning the
>> difference between things he could or couldn’t change.
>> 
>> It’s easy enough, and not immediately dismissable as fallacious, to see
>> Cherrycoke’s evolution as an expression - maybe even a recommendation - of
>> the author’s “attitude journey”
>> 
>> If so, it’s but one step beyond that
>> https://youtu.be/SOJSM46nWwo?si=rk3g2mVjw_p4TYYL
>> to imagine that, emboldened by lack of negative consequences, indeed,
>> plaudits and dinero, for 49, and an antiwar/counterculture groundswell in
>> society up and into the ‘70s, & also steeled in resolution by his friend
>> Richard Fariña’s death, GR became a more overt, passionate statement
>> 
>> But then, his alarms set to clanging by the Pulitzer Board’s refusal to
>> award GR a prize - and other cultural changes starting to be documented by
>> the efforts of writers like Hunter S Thompson - he took a lower profile for
>> quite awhile, and no doubt had time to think deeply…while writing VL about
>> the ins and outs of the right wing response to, and the roots and shoots
>> of, the Movement which Thompson had called “the crest of a high and
>> beautiful wave”
>> 
>> By the time M&D came out, having looked at “both sides now” and then some,
>> he was seeking a place in the culture like that of Rev’d Cherrycoke.
>> 
>> 
>> The slight differences I offer are more of emphasis:
>> 
>> Pynchon was never a pamphleteer (afaik) - always consciously a litterateur
>> 
>> As an artist his emphasis would be closer to that William Carlos Williams
>> quote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably
>> every day for lack of what is found there.
>> <
>> https://quotefancy.com/quote/39722/William-Carlos-Williams-It-is-difficult-to-get-the-news-from-poems-yet-men-die-miserably
>>> 
>> ”
>> 
>> In addition to any topical references, I want to see broad narrative aims:
>> Oedipa’s individuation & blossoming of maturity; the enlargement of her POV
>> with a growing awareness of dastardly plots all around, and of other human
>> realities besides her own; her twin impulses to pursue the trail, but also
>> not to; a truly generous helping of her introspection, served up adroitly
>> and sympathetically; & enough real history to serve as a crèche for the
>> nativity of the fictive “Tristero y Calavera” which serves to connote
>> sadness, the Day of the Dead, the sweet treats of that commemoration, and a
>> multitude of reactions to Pierce’s death (and Death in general & also
>> personal, “it is Margaret you mourn for”)
>> 
>> Going yet one step beyond that, speculatively, the author at this point in
>> his career having attempted marriage once - could he in Oedipa be trying to
>> imagine a more compatible woman with a sensibility akin to his? If we liken
>> novels to stamps, a woman who attends an auction of those items would be
>> like a literary agent in some respects
>> 
>> I find it pleasing so to muse - ymmv
>> 
>> And in conclusion:
>> 
>>> On Jul 30, 2024, at 4:52 PM, Hübschräuber <huebschraeuber at protonmail.com
>>> 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>> More to the point perhaps, whether invented or not, this is some
>>> marvelous writing
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Yes indeedy!
>> 
>>> 
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l