ST etc

Wed Apr 8 21:37:14 UTC 2026

Pynchon on "tendril' in the Slow Learner intro is memorable....

On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 2:29 PM Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com> wrote:

> No Mark, it is way more complex and deep than that. Freedom from the
> fear of death is a major force in human history, and not something that
> can be relegated to acidheads. It was a huge power for early Christians,
> who celebrated it in the communion ritual. It is common ground for many
> spiritual experiences in cultures throughout the world. It can lead to
> courage in warfare or other boldness of thought and action including
> resistance to fascism as Zoyd said. .  As to dismissing "acidheads" or
> users of Peyote, or psilocybin or Ayahuasca, or trance inducing breath
> techniques, you would be dismissing many of the major artists and
> writers and scientists of our time, along with ancient Greek thinkers
> who partook of the Eleusinian mysteries.
>     It strikes me that you are very selective in who and what you think
> is being "satirized" in Pynchon's work.
>
> On 4/8/26 7:30 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> > I agree with what you say about Pynchon's 'vision' as I call it......but
> > not on some of your examples...
> >
> >
> > In Vineland, Zoyd's discussion with Mucho Maas (now a record exec) about
> > acid in the 60s, which made you learn "That you were never going to die.
> > Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a
> > population that knows it'll never die?" is undercut by the line that
> > follows: "It was the way people used to talk" (313-14). We cannot be
> > certain, even about the most potent and interesting forms of critique.
> >
> > C'mon, Zoyd?....Zoyd, the voice of the author, or the reigning answers?
> > when people were on acid?.   This is at base a social answer about
> people's
> > beliefs when on acid in the sixties ---"used to talk"...and how reliable
> > (again) is Zoyd with his social observations... ???....
> >
> > Pynchon is satirizing acidheads pretty clearly here.....not critiquing
> > anything but them here, imo...
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 7:19 AM Corbeau Castrum <filsducorbeau at pm.me>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I definitely agree that GR is not a tidy-layering like High Castle, and
> >> that Pynchon's trying to change our minds. But I think that the novel is
> >> trying to challenge our choices and our preconceptions about what we
> >> believe to be important. Bernard Duyfhuizen talks about "reader traps"
> in
> >> which we are lured into one interpretation of the text only for it to be
> >> undercut or rendered less certain than we expected.
> >>
> >> Take for example the famous passage where Enzian is reflecting on
> >> interpreting the Holy Text of the Rocket ("all right, say we are
> supposed
> >> to be the Kabbalists out here, say that’s our real Destiny, to be the
> >> scholar-magicians of the Zone, with somewhere in it a Text, to be picked
> >> to pieces, annotated, explicated, and masturbated till it’s all squeezed
> >> limp of its last drop . . . " 529 in penguin) and the needs of
> technology
> >> ("It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all the
> >> atre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was
> being
> >> dictated instead by the needs of technology ... " 529-30) , which is
> >> ultimately undercut by the suggestion that "Well, this is stimulant talk
> >> here, yes Enzian’s been stuffing down Nazi surplus Pervitins these days
> >> like popcorn at the movies, and by now the bulk of the refinery—named,
> >> incidentally, for the famous discoverer of Oneirine—is behind them, and
> >> Enzian is on into some other paranoid terror, talking, talking, though
> >> each man’s wind and motor cuts him off from conversation" (530).
> >>
> >> The Argentinian anarchist Squalidozzi says in opposition to the land
> >> divisions of primitive accumulation, “We want to leave it open. We want
> it
> >> to grow, to change. In the openness of the German Zone, our hope is
> >> limitless.’ Then, as if struck on the forehead, a sudden fast glance,
> not
> >> at the door, but *up at the ceiling*—‘So is our danger’” (268). With the
> >> openness of the Zone comes this intense sense of hope, but the openness
> is
> >> ephemeral, soon suffering the Elect’s ever-present colonization of the
> >> material, intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual
> conditions
> >> of existence. Squalidozzi may fail, but by leaving the novel open
> overall,
> >> Pynchon aims to maintain the presence of this hope, despite all the
> >> circumstances, on an aesthetic level.
> >>
> >> So Pynchon leads us strongly in the direction of a particular political
> >> critique but refuses to confirm/affirm it unconditionally. If we read
> GR in
> >> its totality, rather than just picking and choosing what we like, then
> we
> >> are obliged to suffer and endure this uncertainty. In this reading, "Is
> the
> >> baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?" (133) is
> >> about getting the reader to question their own desires. For me Pynchon's
> >> ultimate goal is to force us to remain open to the text and to the
> world.
> >> He wants to expose us to his radical critique of colonialism,
> technology,
> >> and power without us becoming dogmatically attached to this particular c
> >> ritique.
> >>
> >> In Vineland, Zoyd's discussion with Mucho Maas (now a record exec) about
> >> acid in the 60s, which made you learn "That you were never going to die.
> >> Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a
> >> population that knows it'll never die?" is undercut by the line that
> >> follows: "It was the way people used to talk" (313-14). We cannot be
> >> certain, even about the most potent and interesting forms of critique.
> >>
> >> Thus I think that contradiction and ambiguity is essential to Pynchon's
> >> aesthetic and political project and how he wants to change our minds.
> Can
> >> we hold it all together? seems to be the persistent question.
> >> On Tuesday, April 7th, 2026 at 16:32, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> 'Ambiguity' in* the Seven Types of Ambiguity *means ...willful
> >> resonances" willful multiple meanings......the book is a hundred years
> >> old---you can browse
> >> in it online somewhere and you will see that what Empson showed was that
> >> beautifully and it is one way to show what happened as literary
> modernism
> >> as a movement moved in time....
> >>
> >> Ambiguity is an ambiguous word, lol...
> >>
> >> Everywhere, Pynchon shows a vision of reality, some part of his vision
> of
> >> reality, etc....shimmering with multiple meanings.....,start with V
> >> .....and don't stop...
> >>
> >> On Tue, Apr 7, 2026 at 9:21 AM Mike Weaver via Pynchon-l <
> >> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I'm not sure contradictory or ambiguous are useful terms when looking
> at
> >>> GR. Pynchon wants us to decide what is important and the few
> >>> alternatives presented are hints in that direction - the most obvious
> >>> being "Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to
> >>> be?"
> >>>
> >>> For Pynchon it's not about creating a tidy layering of alternates as in
> >>> Man in a High Castle, dreaming a butterfly or butterfly dreaming wise,
> >>> it's about turning the decision making back to the reader. Although its
> >>> themes are found elsewhere in his work that method of delivery first
> >>> practised in Lot 49 was given his all in GR and never used again. GR is
> >>> the only book he has written which has changed people's way of seeing
> >>> the world. Whether it has the same power now it had for we who lived in
> >>> a similar cultural milieu is a question I sometimes ponder. The people
> I
> >>> know who have admitted to being changed have all been of my generation.
> >>>
> >>> cheers
> >>> Mike
> >>>
> >>> On 07/04/2026 12:05, Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l wrote:
> >>>> One aspect of Gravity's Rainbow (which I don't believe is replicated
> to
> >>> quite the same degree in his other novels) is the deliberately
> >>> contradictory nature of the plot. Most clear example: Slothrop's
> >>> conditioning by Laszlo Jamf, whose files he reads and whose tomb he
> visits,
> >>> is contradicted by Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry, who affirms that "Jamf was
> only a
> >>> fiction, to help him explain what he felt so terribly, so immediately
> in
> >>> his genitals for those rockets each time exploding in the sky . . . to
> help
> >>> him deny what he could not possibly admit: that he might be in love, in
> >>> sexual love, with his, and his race's, death" (753 in penguin). The
> >>> Schwarzkommando also have several different contradictory versions
> (first
> >>> as fictitious characters in allied propaganda film, survivors of the
> Herero
> >>> genocide brought back to German to be trained as future neocolonial
> leaders
> >>> in Africa, subversive rocket troops).
> >>>> This contradictoriness of the plot is never resolved, and GR has been
> >>> compared to Todorov's vision of the "fantastic", in which the
> possibilities
> >>> of a natural or supernatural explanation for the events of the plot is
> >>> likewise never resolved or clarified.
> >>>> One way of approaching this situation is to see GR in terms of the
> >>> alternate history, in which one fictitious version of history
> "overwrites"
> >>> (Andreas Martin Widmann has a book that looks at GR this way) the more
> real
> >>> version of history. So, for example, in The Man in the High Castle by
> >>> Philip K. Dick, a German-Japanese WW2 victory overlays the Allied
> victory
> >>> that we know to be true. In GR, with its open ending and lack of
> >>> resolution, there are multiple layers of overwriting that we are
> obliged to
> >>> hold together simultaneously.
> >>>> Do you get the impression that in Shadow Ticket, one particular
> >>> historical plot/ending takes precedence over another? If only because
> of
> >>> its similarity to our own explicitly fascistic US? Or are our choices
> >>> suspended and left open? Does Skeet's letter at the end belong to a
> >>> particular vision of the US? I'm also thinking about that moment when
> Hicks
> >>> gets knocked off the boat but then the narrator affirms that this
> isn't the
> >>> case and he's back on the boat—which to me is less multiple
> possibilities
> >>> and more just a self-aware deus ex machina by the narrator.
> >>>> What do you folks think?
> >>>>
> >>>> On Monday, April 6th, 2026 at 22:07, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
> >
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>> I think the ending reveals we are in the US via shadow-line. (See
> >>> Conrad)
> >>>>> On Mon, Apr 6, 2026 at 12:08 PM Joseph Tracy via Pynchon-l <
> >>>>> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> The ending reveals that we are in an alternate history of the US.
> Not
> >>>>>> merely a fictionalized portion of that history but something that
> >>> could
> >>>>>> have happened if the Bankers Plot, revealed by the plotter's
> intended
> >>>>>> choice for a president to replace Roosevelt, Smedley Butler, had
> >>>>>> succeeded. This is part of the distinct difference in tone and style
> >>>>>> from where America headed in the Roosevelt years. Shadow Ticket
> plays
> >>>>>> like the society has become an extension of somewhat canned noir
> >>> movies
> >>>>>> where everyone talks like a movie tough guy or a hard boiled dame:
> >>>>>> Cagney, Robinson, Bogart. Noir is the shadow style invoked rather
> than
> >>>>>> the upbeat style of a Capra with warmer voices like Jimmy Stewart or
> >>>>>> William Holden Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell. Perhaps the intent was
> to
> >>>>>> remind the reader of where the gangster/cop style favored by our
> >>> current
> >>>>>> Capone of Cheese came from; how it slowly went out of fashion after
> >>> the
> >>>>>> war, revived by McCarthy and the red scare movies, and finally was
> >>>>>> superseded by more suave and sophisticated combination anti-fascist,
> >>>>>> anti-commie heroes like James Bond and Cary Grant and later Jack
> Ryan.
> >>>>>> Hollywood has had a big role in shaping the national mythology for a
> >>>>>> long time, even after WW2 rewriting that history to exclude the
> >>> Russian
> >>>>>> Army from the victory over the German war machine, and to exclude
> >>>>>> Gypsies, communists, the gay and antifascist dissidents from those
> >>>>>> murdered in concentration camps though historians say they were
> >>>>>> collectively larger in number than the murdered Jews. They are still
> >>> not
> >>>>>> included in any of the many movies about Nazi atrocities I have
> seen,
> >>>>>> or in Shadow Ticket. WTF?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I think the noir style of ST is oversaturated with Hollywood but it
> >>>>>> says something about the role of self image as a mythic force that
> >>>>>> shapes how people see themselves and their world and what they are
> >>>>>> willing to accept as the role of government, the role of war, the
> role
> >>>>>> of enemies, the balance between workers and owners, the nature and
> >>>>>> appeal of 'the leading man' or 'sugar daddy' or 'protector soldier'
> or
> >>>>>> 'law enforcer' .
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The role of alcohol and other mind altering substances is an
> >>>>>> important part of the cultural mileu of ST though it manages to hide
> >>> in
> >>>>>> the shadows cast by radioactive cheese, like Pete Hogsbreath in the
> >>>>>> shadow Tyrannosaurus Rump, or like its theoretical opposite of
> upright
> >>>>>> drug-free Christian Zionism in the same shadow. Go figure.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Other topics worthy of a few riffs: Cheese, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jazz
> >>> and
> >>>>>> klezmer, the nonexistence of Japan in a WW2 era novel, Hungary,
> >>>>>> motorcyle culture, labor history in 40s Wisconsin, Gun molls and
> >>>>>> heiresses, the long history of private ' law enfocement'. Cocaine in
> >>> the
> >>>>>> 30s and 40s, the presidency of Herbert Hoover.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 4/5/26 11:43 PM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
> >>>>>>> Changing the (a) to “ass-backwards” , maybe go that way for awhile
> >>>>>> (pondering)
> >>>>>>> … the parting missive (291-293) from the kid, who without the
> >>> umbrage of
> >>>>>> McTaggart’s shadow ticket would be like a young apprentice under his
> >>>>>> (McTaggart’s) developing aegis, but instead was being like shunted
> >>> off from
> >>>>>> the Chicago private dick cohort and onto riding the rails with
> >>> Zinnia, a
> >>>>>> young female companion who dreams of Hollywood Stardom - “They’re
> >>> always
> >>>>>> looking for ‘us Ruby Keeler types’”,
> >>>>>>> https://youtu.be/hV2ZwftnaHg?si=wKfwlPfjxkTdaKpO
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> and why not? Who’s to say that that, and Skeet’s detecting
> ambitions
> >>> in
> >>>>>> the larger market, won’t work out? The Lake Michigan shore,
> America’s
> >>>>>> Riviera, will keep on keeping on without Hicks or Skeet or Zinnia -
> >>> Elliott
> >>>>>> Ness and his ilk will arrive to clean up Chicago, and community
> >>> organizers
> >>>>>> there, among many others, will bring to fruition Langston Hughes’
> >>> prophecy
> >>>>>> about a black President - I can’t find this poem, am I mistaken, I’m
> >>> sure I
> >>>>>> read it a few years ago - he predicts to the exact year a black
> >>>>>> President…breathtaking!
> >>>>>> Not according to AI search, but AI gets stuff wrong.
> >>>>>>> Lew Basnight, with a friendly loan, obviates their necessity for
> >>> riding
> >>>>>> freight trains, good of him, and shares some sobering takes -
> >>> “another one
> >>>>>> of those pep talks you guys are so good at.” I guess Lew moved back
> to
> >>>>>> Chicagoland/Milwaukee from LA himself? Or simply that he gets
> around.
> >>>>>>> The letter’s a nice reminder of where McTaggart’s come from, with
> no
> >>>>>> return address but at least a promise to pick up again (the
> >>> correspondence,
> >>>>>> not that particular letter, that is - he must’ve mailed the letter
> >>> for McT
> >>>>>> to’ve gotten it, right?)
> >>>>>>> “Maybe they’ll keep finding new ways to be innocent.”
> >>>>>>> I like the way Skeet thinks.
> >>>>>>> Also, “Best pals always”
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> 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
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>>
> >>
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>