V.V. (14) McLintic's "bad week" at the V-Note

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
>      [ ... ] some of the colleges were let out and the place had been
>     crowded with these types who like to talk to each other a lot. Every
>     now and again, they'd invite him over to a table between sets [ ... ]
>     Some of them would go through the old Northern liberal routine: look
>     at me, I'll sit with anybody. Either that or they would say: "Hey fella,
>     how about Night Train?" Yes bwana. Yazzuh, boss. Dis darkey, ol' Uncle
>     McLintic, he play you de finest Night Train you evah did hear. An after
>     dat set he gwine take dis ol' alto an' shove it up yo' white Ivy League
>     ass. (280-1)
> 
> Coming immediately after the depictions of European racism directed towards
> native Africans in the early decades of the century this is quite a
> significant passage and statement, and Pynchon's strong attachment to the
> Civil Rights movement (cf. the Watts article), and his ongoing contempt for
> the condescension and arrogance of mainstream American WASP attitudes should
> not be deemphasised. There are indeed reasons why certain things get written
> at certain times, and placed in certain juxtapositions.
> 
> Pynchon seems to be drawing on, if not indeed renouncing, his own college
> background in these sequences (cf Slothrop at the Roseland Ballroom in
> _GR_). The nameless college "types" are a different set to the members of
> the Whole Sick Crew, and I get the impression that Pynchon's sympathies
> reside more with the latter rather than the former group.
> 
> best

I agree with all you say here, but I'm not sure it's his own
college background here at all or that his own college
background is Slothrop's. Maybe what he might have been if
his family fortune hadn't been lost, he hadn't been raised a
catlick and all, met Farina, worked on the road crew, went
out on a float, smoked a little grass, lived in the
villiage...and so on. The old northern liberal routine is
more Harvard boy than long island kid in Elmira land.