herero motif

[Terrance]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:
> 
> >  could it be that the herero motif functions as a kind of "missing link"
> >  between
> >  the issues of slavery and genocide? the german mass-murder of 1904 would
> >  then
> >  appear to be something like an "included middle" between the holocaust (this
> >  connection is explicitly made in v) and american slavery, one of the major
> >  themes in mason & dixon. gr is also about the strange afro-diasporic
> >  experience of the hereros in germany, and this might be considered to be an
> >  echo of the contemporary afro-american situation, pynchon is writing about
> >  in
> >  the watts essay. in both cases the cultural consequences of social exclusion
> >  are described in a similar way, though the watts essay does, if my memory
> >  works
> >  right, not use the word "death-wish" (yet it speaks of two completely
> >  different
> >  cultures). an impressive artistic construction. but is it also "pc"?
> >
> >  are there, btw, articles or something on pynchon's construction of
> >  ethnicities?
> >

There is the essay in that OCLR by Joe Boulter. It is
"Children and Slaves in the West; Imagining Fraternity Among
Outlaws in THE SECRET INTEGRATION" 

I like this essay,  but I'm not sure I can agree with
Boulter. I think Pynchon fails with his early Black
charaters--both McAfee and McClintic Sphere.  



> 
> 
> 
>     ... woke up this morning and rolled myself a bone, the sky's so blue and the
>    future just unknown ... in "pynchon's politics: the presence of the absence"
>   (pynchon notes 26-7, 1990, pp. 5-59), charles hollander writes about pynchon's
>  watts essay:
> 
>    "he sees white culture as unreal, hyped illusion generated by the mass media,
>    but sees watts as a 'pocket of bitter reality'. watts is the sacred, l.a. the
>    profane. and the sacred, as frazer and graves amply demonstrate, may involve
>    violence:
>                                 'but in the white culture outside, in that
>                                 creepy world full of pre-cardiac mustang drivers
>                                 who scream insults at one another only when the
>                                 windows are up; of large corporations where
>                                 niceguymanship is the standing order regardless
>                                 of whose executive back one may be endeavoring
>                                 to stab; of an enormous priest caste of shrinks
>                                 who counsel moderation and compromise as the
>                                 answers to all forms of hassle; among so much
>                                 well-behaved unreality, it is next to impossible
>                                 to understand how watts may truly feel about
>                                 violence. in terms of strict reality, violence
>                                 may be a means to getting money, for example, no
>                                 more dishonest than collecting exorbitant
>                                 carrying changes from a customer on relief, as
>                                 white merchants here still do. [again: is it ok
>                                 to be anarchist? kfl]. far from a sickness,
>                                 violence may be an attempt to communicate, or to
>                                 be who you really are.'
> 
>    pynchon sees l.a., white culture, as refined away from its human, primal,
>    violent origins. watts, black culture, is closer to the primordial, the
>    pagan, the magical. on these levels, black culture is more human, more
>    subject to resonant images. at an art festival in a watts junior high school,
>    pynchon finds what to him is the most compelling image of the relation of the
>    two cultures:
>                                 'in one corner was this old busted, hollow tv
>                                 set with a rabbit-ears antenna on top; inside,
>                                 where its picture tube should have been, gazing
>                                 out with scorched wiring threaded like
>                                 electronic ivy among its crevices and sockets,
>                                 was a human skull. the name of the piece was
>                                 'the late, late, late show.'
> 
>    not dada, but voodoo-techno-art. not an ironic statement, but a hex, a charm,
>    an invocation of the older cultural magic to supplant the new. the tv set is
>    the frontier between the sacred and the profane, the doorway to religious
>    time. it is also a way of hipping up the middle class, saying 'hey whitey,
>    it's later than you think'." (pp. 55f.)

No Doubt about it! Thanks



> 
>  & now someone please tell me again that this hiphop thing is  n o t among the
>  highly relevant p-list issues ... ich hör' nix ... anyway, this was kfl for
>  kcuf, live from the hollander festival weeks in hamburg, germany ... here it's
>  gonna be a real hot day ... stay tuned!


What does P say about Race in his Introduction to Slow
Learner? 

It seems to me, that the times they have been a changing and
Pynchon has too. 


Heartbreaker with your 44...