Watts article (Re: NP Genoa)

[jbor]

Hi Paul

I actually think he was talking about violence as a response to direct
oppression rather than unprovoked acts of vandalism and sabotage such as the
riots in Genoa. In the article Pynchon also writes that from the perspective
of the (white, dominant) society outside Watts it was impossible to
understand how the people there really felt about the violence. And he
contrasts this to the reaction of the police and social workers, who
invariably viewed the violence as a sickness or "evil", one which was
inherent to the black community itself, rather than retaliation for the
state-sponsored violence which had been and was being inflicted upon members
of that community. As always, he was trying to get at the underlying causes,
pierce through the bullshit propaganda, and he did this by appropriating, in
various ways as he does in his fiction, various different perspectives on
the riots.

I think what he was getting at in the sentence you quoted is that when a
person doesn't have or isn't permitted the language, venue, or resources to
express himself or herself in a conflict situation then invariably he or she
will try to resort to physical retaliation of some description. It's not
really the same thing which is going on in Genoa. The agenda of the talks,
the footage of the rioting "protesters", the legitimate protesters turning
away: those images spoke for themselves imo.

best



on 7/22/01 2:04 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> 
> 
>> The protesters threw rocks; a policeman fired a gun at a protester armed
>> with a fire extinguisher.
> 
> 
> "Far from a sickness, violence may be an attempt to communicate, or to be
> who you really are." --Thomas Pynchon, 1966,  still under 30 (slightly) and
> trustable.
> 
> But, hey, not everyone is getting the message. The Washington Post sez this
> morning that despite the rock throwing and Molotov Cocktails only of tiny
> proportion of the protestors are doing anying  but protesting--not engaged
> in violence.