The Whole Sick Crew

[Terrance]

Lisa Stanward wrote:
> 
> Regarding the WSC...
> 
> To me, the significant word is sick.
> 
> (The term, to me, means nothing more than "The gang's all here", as in "Here
> we are, the Whole Sick Crew")
> 
> Assuming the group coined the phrase to describe themselves, the word sick
> suggests that self indulgent angst which seems to mark the life of young,
> middle-class, well-off, urban Westerner.  Enjoying the good life but
> imagining they are hugely oppressed, the crew consider themselves affected
> by a malady which allows them to see "the Truth" about the world.  They
> lament the obliviousness of those outside the crew to life's futility and
> paint cheese danishes to throw off the chains of oppression they suffer as
> WASP males.
> 
> It seems that Pynchon is mocking the self-indulgence of the group to
> consider themselves somehow plagued by their higher ken of the world's
> affairs when, in fact, should they choose to travel outside their Manhattan
> lifestyle, they would discover they knew nothing of life or of hardship.  It
> is a thing of youth, which Maijstral recognises in his early poetry, a
> pretension which P himself acknowledges in his own work in his introduction
> to Slow Learner.
> 
> It brings to mind DeLillo's White Noise.  A professor of Hitler Studies
> whose course skirts around the issue of the holocaust!  These well off,
> white Westerners don't know jack about hardship, untouched by the
> implications of poverty, war, race hatred, and yet suffer a floating anxiety
> (represented by the Airborne Toxic Event) which they have to turn to drugs
> to suppress.  Is this the fate of the WASP?  To suffer no hardship but to
> feel tormented nonetheless?
> 
> Just a thought,
> L.

Thank you! It sounds like WASP Existentialism?  Dear me, I
hope I won't spoil your
comments with my stupid terms.  I already feel so bloody
inadequate (I know, one should never feel the sting of
inadequacy when one's feet are firmly floating on a pint of
muddy Guiness, but I cannot help the feeling at the moment.
I sent my Green eyed Companion out for a bucket from
O'Slaherty's. Now where the hell is that blue tome, 
"The Encyclopedia of Philosophy"? Yes, under the pint of
course
see what it has to say..."Existentialism is not
easily definable." (thanks we needed that around here!)  
Well, it goes on for a paragraph about that, and for eight
or nine  more pages
about existentialism generally.  Suffice it to say that
existentialism involves
the belief that reality is an ugly, terrifying, or
fundamentally painful thing that
everyone tries to avoid, but that the truly brave individual
(and these
are very rare) is obliged to look it in the face and be
miserable for
the sake of ... well, for the sake of more or less nothing. 
Maybe her
own vanity--existentialists usually have some kind of vague
code for
their suffering....well, I'm thirsty, but I'll finish this
if I'm even close?