The Crying of Lot 49, Group Read 2024

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Jun 21, 2024, at 4:58 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I apologize and won’t do it again. But I will also say you don’t know the meaning of non -violence either.
> 
> What I wrote about the text(s) has nothing to to with my beliefs about the CIA and Kennedy’s  death. It has to do with what the text says and does not say. 
> 
> 
That is a reasonable stance though I  doubt you or I are immune from the influence of our own beliefs, especially  in interpreting a writer who has been interpreted in many directions and seems to invite that diversity..  I have heard some of what you think the text says and does not say but would like to hear more development of what you think about the overall intent of how Pynchon structured this novel. My main disagreement so far is not that you see no room for the possibility of a connection to the JFK assassination, but rather is  what seems to be your idea that The Waste encountered later in the novel by OM  is the same entity as the Tristero of the play and of the history that Bortz unfolds and that she glimpses in Mr Thoth’s testimony.  I think the waste  is a branching into a more self organizing anarchist communication system adopted by what P has called the preterite. The idea of an alternate means of expressing and moving information has wide appeal and shows up in both positive and negative ways in the internet, in alternative journalism, letters, books, the pamphlets of Tom Paine or the abolitionists, grass roots labor organizing, direct action  etc. 
I think it is hard to deny that the reaction to such grass roots dissent or calls for change even when the actions are non-violent, has often been extreme violence, even to the point of criminal spying, persecution and murder, and not in keeping with citizen’s  legal constitutional rights. One of the questions that runs through Pynchon’s work is why this is and whether all large states and technological systems gravitate towards the abuse of power in an almost unstoppable delusion of control. He  also stories how people refuse to be bullied,  or look for meaning outside the jaws of mortal history. We all, on some level or another struggle with these issues in effective and ineffective ways, but respectful disagreement seems the best  path to a non-coercive exchange around the writing of Thomas Pynchon. That is all I want.