V.V. (13) Lhamon

[jbor]

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>From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>


>> (though I suspect that Lhamon was, at least
>> partially, forced to adopt this
>> viewpoint in order to maintain his overall thesis in
>> the study):
>
> Not sure what you mean here.

The overall thesis of Lhamon's book is that there was a coalescing of
American "activist" culture in the mid-50s into a "recognizable
aesthetic" (this, rather than the usual notion of the counter-culture
originating in the 60s); so of course he'd need to assert that Pynchon's
send-ups of c. 1950s jazz musicians, abstract painters and beatnik-types are
"ambiguous" (I agree that "ambivalent" would have been a better term, and he
does use it elsewhere, eg. 206) because he's taking Pynchon's text as an
exemplification or culmination of that aesthetic. Despite this minor aside,
I tend to agree with Lhamon that the send-ups *are* ambiguous (or
ambivalent) and self-referring.

> I'm convinced I've read something else by Lhamon on
> Pynchon beyond that review and this chapter

Yes, there's an essay of his entitled 'Pentecost, Promiscuity and Pynchon's
_V._: From the Scaffold to the Impulsive' in the Levine and Leverenz
collection (_Mindful Pleasures: Essays on TP_, Boston, Little Brown, 1976,
pp. 69-86)

>> While his comment that the Hereros "forswear tribal
>> suicide" in _GR_ is
>> nearly as big a clanger
>
> Why so?  Depends on which Herero faction you're
> talking about, perhaps ...

The Empty Ones are as Herero as Enzian, if indeed not more so, and they are
still hell-bent on tribal suicide at text's end, just like their forebears
back in the time of the first missionary and colonial infiltrations (as
Pynchon depicts same, that is.) In referring to the "Hereros" in _GR_ I
think it might be reasonable to assume that Lhamon means to denote the
"Hereros" in _GR_.

> Reads more "closely" in some cases than others?

As I said, his reading of that letter to Thomas Hirsch seems pretty astute.

best