CoL49 - 2nd section of chapter 5

[Mark Kohut]

But, of course, Joseph could be all correct....as a reading...

On Tue, Jul 2, 2024 at 3:46 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> In a materialist, competitive society there is a fair amount of confusion
> between love and capital assets . Miles, Dean Leonard and Serge have names
> but their companions are “their chicks”. The confusion is a marketing
> bonanza for capitalism. .  But the net effect on marriage  is that a better
> position is offered and the acquired partnership fails while the abandoned
> partner may have seen love and meaning and a human sanctuary where there
> was really  only a contingency. This is echoed with the drummer when his
> girlfriend still called only "Serge’s chick" leaves him for Metzger. The
> reaction of the jilted  can be cynicism about love or a search for the real
> thing in self and relations. Of course there are many versions of what is
> real, and it is hard to see Pynchon taking this topic over seriously apart
> from OM’s intense pursuit of what is real in both love and capitalism, good
> faith and foul play, law and truth, the lives of the powerful and the
> powerless.
>
> What I mean is it is hard to take seriously the problems of either the
> paranoids shallow youth culture and art; or the problems of weapons and
> aerospace  executives, who don’t know what they are signing, getting
> replaced by a computer; or lawyer/actors  like Metzger  going for easier
> prey.  What I take more seriously  is the IA, the rejection of love  that
> grows out of  and is really essential to Yoyodyne policies and is a
> powerful force in the dark satiric vision of America Pynchon is
> elaborating. Money from violence or deception is real and highly desired,
> and human commitment and shared values are slogans for productivity and
> sales tools.  That this IA  organization is followed in O. M.’s next
> personal encounter by the CIA seems no accident to me. Claims of
> clandestine intelligence  instead of love, secret power vs local post
> colonial collective decision making, coercion versus anarchism,
> Angelo/Angleton versus Niccolo/Kennedy. Cities designed like printed
> circuits with fake lagoons vs (Arrabal arable) land from Mazatlan still
> connected to its own history, where the CIA is not shaped by fascists but
> anarchist collectives as they resist becoming another plaything of rich
> gringos..
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> > On Jul 2, 2024, at 6:37 AM, J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> >
> > Questions:Why is it love and not capitalism that the founder of IA
> believes has ruined his life?
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>