grgr4 Crutchfield or Crouchfield the westwardman (was Re: GRGR(4) kenosha kid

[rj]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> About Red River, it was also the name of a popular post war movie starring
> John Wayne the quintessential westerman.
> 
> I know everyone know this already.

I think you're onto something here. The term 'westwardman' has always
intrigued me. It doesn't seem to be a natural term at all, no archetype
that I can think of. Now, 'cowboy' or 'frontiersman', yes, but
"westwardman"? There's that stuff later in _GR_ about travellers north
and the Kirghiz Light. And the Sudwest. And, in _Vineland_ DL heads
*east* in a '66 Plymouth Fury whose name is Felicia, stopping in
Columbus Ohio (_VL_ 133-4). Mm.

I'm hip to this political 'names' thing Max is cued into, and I'm
wondering about the symbolic resonances of all those cardinal points.
So, a reading of this (surrealistic) sequence follows, thus:

Crutchfield is a symbol of the American founding father -- an archetype,
if not "archetypical" -- always heading west. One of Zane Grey's riders
of the purple sage perhaps, he is "wood of a different grain and finish
... good-humoured, solid-set against the purple mountainslope, and
looking half into the sun" (68.2), like the final sunset frames of a 30s
Hollywood B-western. He is all free enterprise and the suits and
trappings of democracy, nobility, honorable Old Testament intentions
("Half an Ark's better than none." 68.1) and benevolent force. Strong
and silent, rough and ready, brave and dangerous ("peligroso"), with a
wry sense of humour -- a cliche perhaps, but something we can relate to.
He is cast as a child of Enlightenment rationalism and Puritan
righteousness, a forger of 'progress' and 'civilisation'. But, in
reality, he is a cruel and self-indulgent despot and sadist and sexual
deviate, a dispassionate control freak like Pointsman. And paranoid --
"FDR's little asshole buddies" 68.18 are the CIA/FBI, right? and "Red"
here takes on overtones of communism as well as of indians, and those
early feminists and the Polacks (unions?) and niggers who are also
perceived threats to the white patriarchy. And, it's a river of blood:
the Red River is the blood of these assassinated opponents and radicals
being flushed away by the govt. (Or else, this is what he has become by
1939.)

The land and all its creatures -- those pesky indians and rattlesnakes
-- are brought under the westwardman's tyranny. He keeps heading 'west'
(Manifest Destiny) until one by one all cultures are taken and fucked --
assimilated -- either by force (ka-boom) or volitionally through the
mass-production of disposible consumer objects (those bandannas, eh).
Crutchfield's "the White Cocksman of the terre mauvais" (bad/wrong
earth?, 69.2). All races and creeds are assimilated to his whim,
favoured momentarily only to be then discarded at will (Kuwait, Kosovo).
It's a vision of domination and empire. An Evil empire. And, Pynchon,
where's he? Why, there he is, "playing a mouth harp behind an
outbuilding -- some musical glutton, mouth-sucking giant five-note
chords ... " (68.10) Wyrming his way into the nether reaches of
Slothrop's (and our) consciousnesses and consciences.

"Understand, there was only one." Crutchfield is the Lone Ranger.
Crutchfield is George Washington. Crutchfield is Coca Cola. Crutchfield
is us. Our apathy.

best