Sunddy, April , 1X73
THE MICHIGAN DAIIY
Page Five
Sunday, Aj~ri1 ~, 1q73 THE MICHIGAN DAILY Pc~e Five
The
biggest conspiracy of them all
Guidebooks and pinkos
G R A V I T Y'S RAINBOW, by
Thomas Pynchon. Viking Press,
$15 cloth, $4.95 paper.
By JOE DAVIS
'HOMAS PYNCHON'S n e w
novel Gravity's Rainbow is
more than an awesomely beauti-
ful book; it is a literary event of
the first importance; the sort of
writing that incites violent criti-
cal passions and brisk sales.
Pynchon's cult, having endured
ten lean years since he published
his first major novel, V., have
been graced with a veritable
Pentecost. They should be babbl-
ing in tongues for quite a while,
each of themas preaching a dif-
ferent version of what the novel
signifies. They will agree only
that it is one of the most sig-
nificant books to come along in
years, substantial by virtue of
its more than 760 pages, and
that it redeems the extravagant
promise of V.
At a time when Watergate is
little more than a sordid comic
caper, here is Pynchon uncover.
ing The Biggest Conspiracy of
Them All! Just as we think we've
purged our consciences of Viet-
nam, he has come out with one
of those war novels that keen on
siibtly nagging like Catch-22 or
The Tin Drum. Immediately rele-
vant without being merely trendy,
it is a story about rocketry dur-
ing World War II, with an intri-
cate network of characters in-
volving scientists, spies, soldiers,
and victims, the Germans who
built the V-2, and the British who
suffered its terror and destruc-
tion. The rocket business seems
to be slumping these days, but
the defense budget is up. Pyn-
chon knows that the Big Money
is on Death every time, that the
serious investors will ride with
the one sure thing. His instinct
seems right in celebrating the
ballistic missile as the totem of
our times, and he is no modest
aspirant for its shamanship.
FICTIONISTS long ago discov-
ered that Meaningful Uncer-
tainties can be generated by the
interplay between unreliable
viewpoints. Pynchon carries out
this principle with a hundred
major characters for another
author's ten. And what a set of
viewpoints to rely on!-clair-
voyants, paranoids, statisticians,
Pavlovian and Freudian psy-
chologists, counterspies, engi-
neers, peasants, peers, capital-
ists, Communists, anarchists,
sadists, masochists, cops, gang-
sters, black marketeers, acid-
crazed Swiss chemists, zoot-
sniters high on reefers, fools,
clowns, and displaced persons,
dead men (silent and otherwise),
effete intellectuals, Machiavel-
lian statesmen, Americans, Brit-
ish, Germans, Russians, Africans,
dozens of nationalities from
scores of regions-each of these
characters seeming to be con-
nected to practically all of the
others. Needless to say, the num-
ber of Meaningful Uncertainties
increases exponentially as the
number of sinister and unreliable
narrators increases numerically.
Pynchon's unique contribution
to the novel is his use of science
in a scientifically sophisticated
way. He is one of the few writers
not writing exclusively science
fiction to have taken science
seriously. Who better than Pyn-
chon, then, to develop the com-
plex equation as a poetic form?
Who better to use positivistic
science as a symbolic language
for exploring human and esthetic
relationships? The title Gravity's
Rainbow, to take one blatant
example, refers to the parabola,
the immutable form traced by a
rocket within the earth's gravi-
tational field. The parabolic arc
governs the whole structure of
this novel from its slow, stately
beginning to its final breath-
taking rush of destruction. Its
rise-and-fall structure is that of
working for Allied intelligence in
London during the Blitz. As
Slothrop pieces the puzzle to-
gether, the conspiracy grows un-
til it implicates literally all life,
all spirit, all matter. It becomes
clear that weapons cartels, gov-
ernments, and in fact secular
"reality" as we know it are only
fronts for a larger and more
sinister operation-the old con-
spiracy of Death against Life,
and more apalling still, the mas-
ochistic collusion of Life with
Death.
This is no ordinary spy story;
its plot cannot be summarized in
terms of double and triple cross
but only in terms of the n-th
cross, where we begin to see the
whole pattern of faith and be-
trayal. Pynchon pushes the value
of n to hitherto undreamed-of
heights, like a cyclotron generat-
ing wholly new kinds of energy
to make wholly new kinds of in-
quiries. Be warned, prospective
reader, that there is nothing less
than a Cosmic plot to be followed
in this book, no linear story but
an n-dimensional net to be dis-
entangled or desperately jumped
into as you will.
BEHIND PYNCHON'S playful-
ness lurks a deadly serious
dialectic between Life, the Or-
ganization of Things into Form or
Synthesis, and Death, the Dis-
organization of Life-forms into
Chaos. His early works such as
"Entropy" and V., influenced by
Henry Adams' belief that "Chaos
tion that Synthesis must and will
be balanced by Control. Crea-
tion and destruction combine to
form a still larger Process.
The struggle between them is
"the real War," one which "is
always there," and in which
World War II was only a skirm-
ish. Pynchon has outgrown his
concept of history as a road
which dead ends in Chaos, and
has grown instead to think of his-
tory as dynamic change, as an
eternally ongoing process of
Transformation.
The agent of Transformation,
and the true hero of Gravity's
Rainbow, is the artist, Pynchon
himself; but however heroically
he may try to synthesize Every-
thing, pot even he is exempt
from the laws of Transformation.
The implications of Pynchon's
novel multiply beyond belief. His
imaginative structure threatens
to get out of control, like a can-
cer transgressing the limits of
cellular death. Like the nuclear
physicist or the rocket scientist,
Pynchon has created something
which feeds only on itself and
grows independently of the needs
of men. The tragic parabola can
barely contain the amorphous
proliferation of his imagination.
Normally we either lock these
creative paranoids up in institu-
tions or we build our institutions
(churches, states, literary cults)
around them where they stand.
Cooptation is indeed a formidable
method for Control; They have
Their ways bending everything
but he seems unable to disen-
tangle decadence as a literary
subject from decadence as a
writer's habit of mind. Like many
of his characters, he flirts with
the sin of Pride by amplifying
his own despair into a Universal
Principle.
PYNCHON IS his own best
critic and articulates for him-
self the difficulties of his enter-
prise. He thinks of them in terms
of Heisenberg's uncertainty prin-
ciple, which asserts that the
closer a physicist gets in his
measurements of an object, the
more his measurements are dis-
torted by the interaction between
the measuring and measured ob-
jects. It seems that he must be
imaginatively sucked into Their
power game if he is to do his job
for us, the job of illuminating
that power game.
This weakness, then, may be
merely a hazard of novel writing,
or it may be Pride of Intellect, a
tendency to rest satisfied with
the endless labyrinths of the
mind. Pynchon is so busy Con-
necting Everything that he has
neglected to connect himself.
Real suffering, real love, real
human life are not to be found
in his fictions, and there is some-
thing finally sterile and barren
about the hothouse blooms of his
imagination. He develops the
novel as a way of finding intel-
lectual truths at the expense of
its potential for finding emotional
truths. Pynchon is, if not the
books books books books
the de casibus story, the most
basic form of tragedy.
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is neith-
er quick nor easy reading.
Embark on it as you would on an
unabridged version of the Penta-
gon Papers. Pynchon's fictions
do not have plots, exactly; they
have, well, conspiracies. Nom-
inally the conspiracy in this book
involves international weapons
cartels, the Boys in the Back
Room who engineer wars and
sell weapons to all sides. The
hero, one Tyrone Slothrop, stum-
bles upon this conspiracy while
was the law of nature; Order
was the dream of man," assert
that Things in the long run tend
toward Death, Decay, and Chaos.
Pynchon's significant depar-
ture in Gravity's Rainbow is to
reformulate the conflict in terms
of Synthesis versus Control.
While Adams' thesis governed his
previous work, this novel opens
with a quote from Wernher von
Braun: "Nature does not know
extinction; all it knows is trans-
formation." Pynchon moves from
a fatalistic assertion of the Su-
premacy of Death to the asser-
to Their own purpose, the final
consolidation of the Empire of
Death. The Boys in the Back
Room, it turns out, control even
the politics of taste. They seem,
at least, to have their way in
Pynchon's sex fantasies, which
are markedly preoccupied with
whips, chains, leather, vinyl, and
anality. Even relatively straight
sexuality in this novel expresses
the old decadent-Romantic con-
fusion between love and death.
To be sure, the eroticization of
death in our time is exactly the
"point" of Pynchon's writing;
Bobby Fischer, then the Doctor
Faustus of the contemporary
novel.
Gravity's Rainbow, in other
words, has both the strengths
and weaknesses of ambition. lie
brings all that he's got (and per-
haps all that we've got) into the
creative effort. At a time when
the novel is supposedly dying,
Pynchon has staked six years of
work on his belief in a fiction
of total resources. The novel
must either see him or fold. The
stakes are always that high in
the Back Room.
THE,. DREAM AND THE
DEAL: THE FEDERAL WRIT-
ERS PROJECT, 1935-1943, by
Jere Mangione. Little, Brown
and Company, 1972, 416 pages,
$12,50.
By BOB BERNARD
"In the early stages of Fed-
eral One, when some of its di-
rectors felt hamstrung by rigid
WPA regulations, they de-
manded and obtained an audi-
ence with Harry Hopkins, their
titular chief. Hopkins listened
patiently to their complaints
for some time; then, noting
that Henry Alsberg (the direc-
tor of the Writers' Project)
was the only one who had not
said anything, asked: 'What
about you, Henry? What is
your gripe?' Alsberg grinned,
and in his slow and heavy
voice, replied, 'I don't have
any'gripe, Harry. I haven't
had as much fun since I had
the measles!"'
ND FUN it was! But the
Federal Writers Project
was much more. From the very
depths of the worst depression
this country e v e r suffered
emerged the most novel, most
positive relationship the United
States government has ever had
with its literati. Originally con-
ceived of as little more than a
method for giving writers a dole
while keeping them busy, Fed-
eral One as the Writers Project
was called eventually produced
through the vehicle of state
guide-books some of the best
writing on America's towns and
cities and ethnic groups. Some
of America's best writers, men
such as Ralph Ellison, Richard
Wright, and. Saul Bellow, ap-
proached their maturity while
working on the Project.
The thirties were a desperate
time and not just for journalists
without newspapers and profes-
sors without students. Fully one
third of the working force were
on the street in endless bread
lines or dismal shanty towns
affectionately named Hoover-
villes. Roosevelt and his closest
aide Harry Hopkins, a former
social worker, sought to create
programs that would provide the
ilhision of productive labor while
helping to keep millions of
Americans alive until somehow
American capitalism could hoist
itself from the sewer into which
it had taken a swan dive.
THE MOST comprehensive of
1 New Deal programs was the
Works Progress Administration.
For most enrolled in this pro-
gram, work consisted of simple
pick-and-shovel labor or conser-
vation projects. But the legisla-
tive act that created the Works
Progress Administration,. t h e
Emergency Relief Act of 1935,
also contained a clause authoriz-
ing "assistance to educational,
professional, and clerical per-
sons; a nationwide program for
useful employment of artists, mu-
sicians, a c t o r s, entertainers,
writers . . . and others in these
cultural fields." On the basis of
this provision, art, theater, mu-
sic, and writers programs were
developed.
Of all the groups disaffected
by the plight of the economy,
writers and intellectuals were
the most drawn to left-wing ex-
planations of what had brought
on the misery. As early as 1931,
53 of the nation's most promi-
nent writers had signed a "man-
ifesto" declaring their support
for the Communist Party, and
as early as 1932, 11 "proletar-
ian" novels had been published
in the United States. The ex-
tent of left-wing influence in
Federal One was to have a dis-
ruptive influence on the Project
and ultimately served as the cat-
alyst for bowdlerizing and event-
ually dismantling it. At the same
time, by serving the most imme-
diate needs of literally starving
intellectuals and by providing
some kind of focus for literary
energy, the Writers Project
served to defuse the revolution-
ary fervor of thousands of its
employees. Many leftists were
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fully aware of the cooptive na-
ture of the Project and severely
criticized the government for
tossing such sops. ..
rHE MAN chosen to head the
Federal Writers Project,
Henry Alsberg, brought to the
program a background and set
of personal contradictions that
in a highly complicated way
served to lend color and addi-
tional dimensions to the Project,
but at the same time implanted
the seeds of eventual chaos and
destruction.
Born of Jewish - German par-
ents, graduated from Columbia
Law School at twenty, Henry
Alsberg found his most exciting
calling in journalism. An editor-
ial correspondent for the Nation,
the New York World, and the
London Daily Herald, Alsberg
made six forays into revolution-
ary Russia. Appointed a direc-
tor of the American Joint Distri-
bution Committee, he spent
seven months riding the rails
through the Ukraine swith ten
thousand dollars in his pocket
which he distributed to village
Jewish elders as he saw fit.
Eventually Alsberg became dis-
enchanted with the Bolshevik
regime and fell afoul of the po-
lice. Alsberg returned to the
states in the 1920s, dividing his
time between protests to Soviet
suppression of civil liberties
along with anarchists such as
Emma Goldman and producing
for the Provincetown Players
some very successful plays by
E.E. Cummings and Paul Green.
Originally hired as a publicist
for the Works Progress Adminis-
tration, Alsberg came to his job
with a reputation as one of the
worst administrators in the
government. Something of a
slouch with food crumbs and
cigarette ashes covering his suit,
Alsberg had a lot of trouble
making decisions and no trouble
at all leaving projects unfinish-
ed. Yet he was a deeply com-
passionate man with 20 years of
experience in journalism. Als-
berg had another trait very rare-
lv found in the top echelons of
any bureaucracy - creative
critical intelligence.
The Project had its central
headquarters in Washington, with
local offices in each of the states
and most of the major cities.
Each state office was responsible
for researching, editing, and get-
ting its own guidebook published.
The guidebooks came to be di-
vided into several sections, with
the first s e c t i o n s containing
essays, maps, and photographs
on literary, historical, and just
plain anecdotal topics, while the
last sections presented a number
of interesting motor and walk-
ing tours of the state.
THE STORY of the Writers
Project could be told high-
lighting the bureaucratic jockey-
ing, political infights, red tape,
hatchet jobs and personality con-
flicts, and Mangione devotes lots
of space to doing just that. Yet
remarkably, a lot of good work
was done during the all-too-brief
existence of the Project. The first
of the guidebooks to be publish-
ed, the Idaho Guidebook, set the
standards for all future Project
work. Largely written by Vardis
Fisher, the state director, this
book is so good it seems unbe-
lievable that it could be a pro-
duct of the federal government.
The Writers Project sponsored
a number of studies of ethnic
groups and their folklore. Every-
thing attracted the investigator's
attention - Jamaican proverbs,
Irisih songs and stories, stories of
Father Divine and Daddy Grace.
In New England the lives of Con-
necticut clock makers and mu-
nition workers were studied; in
Oklahoma came tales of the oil-
field workers; from Chicago the
life stories of railroad workers
and sign painters. The New York
City Project even pubihed a
study in Yiddish. Among the
most exciting chronicles were
those of the ex-slaves. Trans-
cribed in their own idiom, these
precious narratives recapture the
wide range of experience of the
slave from kidnapping in Africa
through the misery and uneven
personal compensations of slav-
ery to Civil War and freedom.
frustrating dilemma for many of
its employees. As creative s
the programs could be, it did
not permit any personal work to
be done on government time. To
many this negated the whole
function of paying writers to
practice their craft. As a partial
compensation some writers such
as Edward Dahlberg, Maxwell
Bodenheim and Richard Wright
were secretly permitted vy Als-
berg to work at home on their
own material with the only pro-
viso being that they report to the
office once a week with evidence
of their work. It was during this
time that Richard Wright wote
his first novel, Native Son. For
others satisfaction had to come
from independently mimeograph-
ed collections of poems, essays,
and short stories such as those
published in a local mgazine of
San Francisco writings edited by
Kenneth Rexroth.
THE WRITERS Project posed
a dilemma for many of
the other New Deal make work
projects-the demands posed by
a world war. Yet the unpopulr-
ity of any intellectual enterprise
sponsored by the government of
a people deeply committeed to a
pragmatic approach guaanteed
its ephemeral nature. Most im-
portant as a precursor of evil
times to come were the red-bait-
ing hearings held by the Dies
Committee. In fact the commit-
tee Dies chaired, the House Com-
mittee on Un-American Acdvi-
ties, was created as a temprary.
body to investigate Communist
influence in the Federal Writers
Project in New York City.
As short-lived as the Project
was, as marred as it was by
bureaucracy, it left a body of
popularly received literature and
manuscript anid research mate-
rial that can only strengthen and
enrich one's understanding of this
country. We owe a debt to the
writers who provided us with
this legacy and to the authQr of
this history of the Project for
retelling the story with such
completeness and with such in-
volevement.
Watertown: American mainstream
CRISIS IN WATERTOWN: THE
POLARIZATION OF AN A'JERI-
CAN COMMUNITY, by Lynn
Eden. The University of Michigan
Press, 218 pages, $6.95. (Nomi-
nated for the 1973 National Book
Award in Contemporary Affairs.)
By TONY SCHWARTZ
N THE SURFACE, Crisis in
Watertown: The Polarization
of an American Community is a
book about the events leading to
the firing of a young activist min-
ister in Watertown, Wisconsin, a
few years back. Its immediate
significance lies in the fact that
its author is 21-year-old Lynn
Eden, who graduated last year
from the University's Residential
College, and who became the
first student ever published by
the University of Michigan Press.
The book's message, however,
transcends Watertown, and de-
serves attention for better rea-
sons than the fact that a local
yokel has made good. Crisis in
Watertown is a rare document
of collected voices, predominant-
ly the voices of that ethereal
group Richard Nixon has always
referred to as his "silent major-
ity." In this work they have
been given a 200-page opportu-
nity to step forward and speak
out about how they perceive the
world and their own lives.
The result, at least for this
reader, is a disheartening tale of
paranoia, parochialism, and ra-
tionalization-all of which seem
to stem from one cause: an em-
passioned resistance to change,
any change.
There are exceptions of course;
the minister himself, the couple
Eden lived with while she wrote
the book, and a few young peo-
ple, but more of them have the
vision of a Jean Bertling:
"I don't think much. It used
to bother me-being inactive.
When we first moved to Water-
town I started doing more then,
working with the kids in Girl
Scouts and Sunday School. Well
you know as you get older, you
just don't have time to worry
about the world. I get a big
enough thrill just balancing the
budget, going to the store with
enough to buy something extra.
I know I'm a frauhousewife but
it's an awful lot of work with
three and taking care of the
house, and Bob."
It is to Eden's credit that when
she went back to Watertown to
get releases from the people she
had quoted, every one of them
consented. But it is also frighten-
ing; frightening because none of
the statements can be viewed
any longer as off-the-cuff re-
marks. They express what these
people believe, and more than
that, they express what they are
willing to admit they believe.
ALAN KROMHOLZ, the Con-
gregational Church minister,
did have time to worry about
the world, and he wanted others
to worry about it with him. He
m a r c h e d in Milwaukee with
Fatther James Groppi, in the
push for open housing, and he
urged a similar policy for Water-
town. In his sermons he preach-
ed about putting the humane
principals of the Bible into daily
practice.
Kromholz was fired as minis-
ter by an overwhelming vote of
his congregation on May 19, 1968.
The real reasons for his dismiF-
sal were not the apparent ones.
It was claimed that Kromholz
did not properly minister to the
sick. He was accused, usually
indirectly, of being a Communist.
It was said that he edited a local
newspaper, which was put out,
in fact, by a group of students
who advocated progressive
change in general, and open
housing in particular. The rum-
ors' about Kromholz were as
numerous as the anonymous,
threatening phone calls he re-
ceived toward the latter part of
his ministry.
The accusations were merely a
comfortable f r o n t. As Betty
Eberts, one of the most percep-
tive Watertown residents, ex-
plained, "They wanted a tran-
quilizer, and they wanted to be
assured that everything was ale
right. They didn't like somebody
upsetting the apple cart." What
they didn't want specifically
were blacks in their backyards,
and that was the applecart they
saw Alan Kromholz tampering
with Father Thilman, a Krom-
holz supporter !rom the local
Catholic church, summed it up
when he said: "It' so much
status quo. They had no vision
beyond the Rock River."
EDEN IS painstaking in her
effort to let the people of
Watertown speak for themselves
and in keeping any of her own
value judgments out of the book.
That effort is admirable at first
-both because of the obvious
temptation to pounce on contra-
dictions, and because people like
these, for better or for worse
the voices of "average" Ameri-
cans, are seldom given an oppor-
tunity to speak their minds.
Ironically, however, it is prob-
ably this very effort which is the
book's major lacking. Eden's
stance is so detached that the
book loses a certain sense of
richness, dimension, and move-
ment. The characters seem to
exist in a vacuum, identified only
by their words, and it is hard to
remember one from another
when the book ends. The narra
tive suffers from the author's
lack of descriptive input. How
do these people respond in every-
day situations? What do they look
like? What distinguishes one per-
son from another? Who is re-
spected in town, and what seems
to be the criteria for respect?
What were their parents like?
How do they interact with others?
What makes them squirm and in
what situations are they most
comfortable? Most important, did
anyone go through any changes
as a result of the events leading
to Kromholz's dismissal? Were
there any who, deep down, came
out with doubts, mixed feelings,
retrospective guilt?
Eden hasn't probed these ques-
tions, and the reader is left with
a resulting sense of superficial-
ity. The book is an important
beginning, but one in which only
the tip of an iceberg has been
exposed. It remains for another
writer-or for Eden herself-to
further pursue the subject; to
find out where the attitudes of
the people of Watertown, and
the many others like them, come
from; to offer, finally, a more
dimensional and analytical look
at the reasons why the prospect
of social change so frightens
them,
M. E. C. H. A. presents
ELTEATRIO CAMPESINO
de AZTLAN
"THE CH ICANO FARMWORKER THEATER"
The Chicano Struggle
UFW Union and Boycott Efforts
MUSIC-PLAYS-SATIRE-SPIRIT
Sat., April 14-Hill Auditorium
U of M Campus--8 P.M.
NO ADMISSION
Dr. CharlesL. Stevenson
Professor, Department of Philosophy
SPEAKS ON
"Man and His Values
WHAT VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE AND HOW WE
CAN USE SCIENCE TO SUPPORT THEM
6th Lecture of a Series entitled
MAN AND HIS WAYS
International Center Recreation Room
I-
The littlest conspiracy
FAIRY TALE, by Erich Segal.
Harper & Row, 46 pp., $4.95.
NEVER read Love Story, and .
I didn't see the movie either. I
have been told by those who-
ought to know that I didn't miss
anything, but there are obviously
an awful lot of Americans who
would d i s a g r e e, presumably
most of those many millions who
digested that piece of maudlin
sentimentality in one of its two
First of all, it's not funny; not
a bit. And second, at $4.95-ten
cents a page, mind you-it is
more expensive per word than
even the slimmest book of
poetry ever hoped to achieve for
the most avaricious publisher.
And lastly, if it makes any
difference, it ain't even original,
at least in the sense that too
many borrowed phrases, too
many copied styles, too many
. ..oh well.
HOP WOOD LECTURE
Robert W. Corrigan
Drama critic, editor, and essayist. Founder and first
editor of THE TULANE DRAMA REVIEW. Author
of THE THEATRE IN SEARCH OF A FIX (April,
1973)
"The Changing of the Avane-arde" I