Will's Kids -- Bailes

[Phillip P. Muth]

Dear Elana:

It seems to me that the premise of a pure culture as opposed to
an economy is a bit of red herring.  The binary of a "pure"
culture that has not been brought to, if not ruin, then perhaps
to multinational capitalist infection is a plot for a made for TV
movie of the week.  You might be able to get a Baldwin to star
in it, but if you wanted a the epic version you'd have to get
familiar with The Recognitions, Man Without Qualities,
Gravity's Rainbow--the big books, or at least some of the books
that bring us versions of the apocalyse that result
from a "culture" or an "economy" that is devoted to death.  I
guess I'd throw in Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents,
since the useful metaphor of the death instinct is defined
there. And certainly Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer
Society" is the most quoted test to cover the ground you are
exploring.
In another post I mentioned the necessity of the complicitous
critique to the post modern repetoire (see Linda Hutcheon for
more details); Pynchon both critiques and celebrates, which
makes his chance for made for tvdom doomed.
Perhaps we might think of Pynchon in Lot 49 as doing a poetics
and politics of ethnography (see book by James Clifford).  He
uses the culture because unlike the oldtime anthropologists, he
does not believe in a plane of objectivity.
You've certainly picked a large and intimidating topic.  Good
luck.

Parke Muth