neither paranoid nor dispossessed

[wood jim]

--- calbert at hslboxmaster.com wrote:
> 
> > 
> > A middle class LI boy was not a "foreigner" at
> Cornell
> > when attended there. 
> > 
> 
> You read too much into "foreign".....he/she would
> very likely be on 
> the periphery as such schools were, even more than
> today, the 
> province of those who could afford to go...My father
> suggested that 
> when he applied to Brown (1946), the biggest concern
> of the 
> Admissions Officer was "WHo is your tailor?"  that
> may be an 
> exaggeration, but there is a hint of truth......
> 
> THough not particularly smitted with class envy, I
> can tell you that 
> as a student there in the swinging 70s, I too felt a
> difference 
> between myself and the "aristocracy"....maybe it was
> all 
> internal....but there nonetheless.....huge increases
> in Financial aid 
> have changed the landscape since (figures suggest
> that more than 
> 65% of attendees receive some form of aid).......

I understood, I simply disagree. 


> 
> > > i) re-reading V, I  was struck by the little
> hints
> > > of class "envy" 
> > > which seem to creep up in his description of the
> LI
> > > neighbourhood 
> > > of his youth....
> > 
> > I think you have it reveresed. He describes 5
> Towns,
> > not his neighborhood. The envy goes the other way
> > round. 
> 
> 
> I disagree.....Pynchon was raised, as I understand,
> in one of the 5 
> towns.....Profane is from what appears to be a
> decidedly middle 
> class home.....but I don't have a copy handy at the
> moment, so I'll 
> let this slide for now....
> 
> 
> love,
> cfa

OK, but Benny (his father a RC, his mother a Jew) is
from West Villiage NYC, Houston to be exact. 

Pynchon weas born in Oyster Bay, raised in Glenn Cove.


Rachel is a 5 Towns Jewish Girl. 

P makes great fun of 5 towns, where Benny works one
summer as a road laborer. 5 Towns is mocked, it's
"JAPS" and its Jewish/Chinese Resturant  suburban 
snobbery and incest. 

Remember R is proud of the fact, and should be, that
she got out of it, although she brags about her blue
blood sexual conquests, when she was sporting her MG,
denting it up around daddy's Park Ave. office. 
MG

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