Daffy Duck and the New Yorker

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

This is a good thread.  Andrew's remarks sound smart, but does he trust too much in 
the winnowing powers of time?  But I am wondering, in response to Skip Wolfe's 
question about the pervasiveness of pop in our milieu: what happens when the man 
himself becomes transformed into --pure--pop.  This Lotion interview and its 
aftermaths--eveyone, not just Richard Oh Romeo--is hep to the Godzilla T-Shirt man 
now.  The newly lousy NEW YORKER's latest issue has a fluff thing titled GODZILLA 
MEETS INDIE ROCKERS (page 44), containing the smarmiest drek I've seen in a 
while, and that's going some.  An excerpt:

" 'He's not as well-spoken as you might expect,' adds Bill, the bassist and chief cerebral.
			'He makes a lot of faces,' says Jim, the guitarist.
  'Everthing about him is just so casual,' explains Rob, the drummer."

Yeah, like those novels, and his paranoia, and rejecting the Howells medal, and 
having his Navy files erased--casually, I guess.  What kind of crap is this?  The 
dilemma is, I am most emphatically NOT one of those who look down on pop culure; 
those in the "literary world" the NEW YORKER article refers to as being "dismayed" at 
the prospect of TRP turning into a "groupie." I agreewholeheartedly w/ the learned 
discurses on Wile E. and the skinny Road Runner, and can do a fair Underdog myself.  
No, it's not pop culture in the raw I fear, it's this middle brow processing of everything 
critical and challenging to our fast Disneyfying world into some--safe--box.  Doesn't the 
NEW YORKER just love being able to discuss Pynchon in tones that, I swear, you 
would assume came straight out of TIME if you just read the text?  I think it's great 
that Pynchon wears a Godzilla T-shirt and hangs out w/ Lotion.  It's not so great that 
this is being seized on as a way to channel our conceptual grasp of him.  (Look at those 
quotes again.  These guys, undoubtedly goofing on the whole interview. are framed in 
such a way that these quotes function as strong markers).  And where is his work in all 
of this?

john m


>Do you think it's that the "pop" elements of our culture (in the U.S., at 
>least, and increasingly in other western countries) are such a pervasive and 
>influential part of our cultural climate that  serious writers writing about 
>the current world would find them hard to ignore?
>
>     Skip Wolfe
>     crw4 at nip1.em.cdc.gov
>
>