Benny's Job ("kook"

[Terrance]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> ... well, out of town the past couple of days, just catching up, but
> I'll check out that link you posted again, Terrance.  Couldn't connect
> when the Digest came through, and I assumed you were ribbing me by
> referring to the Sandinista/Contra/Reagan years.  But, hey, if 1950s
> Nicaragua is an even better fit, well, as always, the more, the
> merrier.  

What is a better fit, imo, is what the text in question, in
this case, the novel V., supports. I appreciate that you are
willing to reply not to the ribbing by me, but to the
arguments. If only I could filter these off-list pests. 



But I certainly wouldn't discount Vietnam, as the
possibility
> and dangers of escalating U.S. involvement certainly would have seemed
> on the horizon for astute observers ca. the writing/publication (1963)
> of V. no?

I'm looking for more from the novel V., more textual, be it
shallow, deep, subtextual, cryptic, whatever, but support
from the novel V. I don't think this is an unreasonable
request. I'm not discounting anything. I know P is Astute. 
Yes,  P was and is astute. He demonstrates not only his
astuteness but that he is a serious student of history, his
serious interest in the  politics and history of the 1950s
and 1940s and 1930s in evident in V., so it makes sense, and
we have  his later works to support this, that he was
interested in the goings on all around him, ('It's alright
Ma" "Meantime life outside goes on All around you" Dylan
1965). But does early SE Asian story, or the Bay of Pigs
story, the 1960s stories, sources even, make it into the
novel V. ? These would seem to be the stories P would want
to include,  but does he? It seems to me that if he has
included them, we should have no trouble finding textual
support. 


> 
> Again (...), am not claiming any actual Pynchonian prescience in re:
> "Operation Igloo White," which, again, was only the culmination in
> Vietnam of the "intelligence" and technology driven

I understand, but the text evidence, from V., "coco" and
"gook" and the white alligator, and "some of you don't come
back," and so forth, doesn't add up, imo. I think in
disagreeing here, jbor has made very convincing arguments. 

 early Cold War
> military operations are, indeed, the immediate object of parody here
> (that is, Chapter V [!] of V.), but such parodies cannot help, at that
> reception end, but being articulated with the events of the day
> (Vietnam, Nicaragua), 

OK, the reception end. That's a different story, in which
case it can be helped. If it is only on the reception end,
where the reader is responding with these histories and
facts in mind (Vietnam, Laos, Bay of Pigs), where the reader
is said to have a particular reader's response, it's not a
matter of textual support. We could say, the immediate
audience, the
folks that read the book hot of the press may have responded
with the politics,
issues of the day,  in mind. Perhaps that what P had in
mind. But, isn't it lost almost 40 years later, say,  to a
young lady reading V. in an 'American Literature of the
1960s' class? Even if she goes back and researches the
critical essays and reviews written in 1963, and even if
these essays and reviews are also astute, and even if these
essays and reviews note that the novel is full of 1960's
issues, politics (Vietnam, Bay of Pigs),  couldn't it be the
case that when the student, also astute, a serious student
of politics and history, sits down to writes her own essay,
she will be able to argue convincingly, with textual
support, not reader response, audience of the day response,
that the essays and reviews written in 1963 by the astute
essayists and reviewers have no textual support and that her
reading is therefore better fitted to the text? 


articulations that Charles Hollander's
> unfortunately uncollected ouevre traces out, and right back to Pynchon's
> own context and possible, probable concerns.  

Pick and essay and post something from it. I've read it.
I'll reply, but please, we have to, to be fair, try to keep
it fun, interesting, but no bait and no dynamite. I have
enough trouble diving deep these days.