V.V. (13) Lhamon

[Dave Monroe]

Okay.  Thanks for the clarification.  I think we agree
all around here in re: The Whole Sick Crew, a certain
self-deprecatory sense of humor there.  Pynchon is no
doubt indebted to, implicated in the Nuevo York
intelligentsia, and he knows it.  And still astounded
that Lhamon's "PP&P" didn't come up on the Infonet
here, though it didn't help that I searched every word
beginning with "P" BUT "Pentecost" and "Promiscuity." 
And I was under the impression Lhamon was focused on
Enzian's Schwarzkommando there, but ... but
"ambiguity" perhaps there.  Thanks again ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> ----------
> >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
> 
> 
> 
> 


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