Watts article (Re: NP Genoa)

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> on 7/24/01 12:33 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> > What can we make of Pynchon's admission, in the Slow Learner
> > Introduction, that some of the offensiveness in those early
> > stories can be attributed to his own prejudices?
> >
> 
> Pynchon does not refer to the Watts article in the _Slow Learner_ 'Intro'.

Correct. I meant that he admits that some of the offensive
language in 
the early Short Stories are not simply the character's, but,
as Pynchon admits, 
his own. I have argued, I think you agree with me, that the
Slow Learner Introduction is 
an honest retrospective.   



> 
> > P opens himself to these criticism. Sure, it's 2001 and the
> > essay on Watts, from a white intellectual,  is better than a
> > lot of the stuff that was  written at the time, but
> > I can't help but feel that P's approach is a "tourist's
> > approach," where the author "visit" a different culture and
> > picks up a few local phrases and "gospels" and tries to
> > incorporate these
> > into his more bookish tendencies.
> 
> I think this is a pretty harsh judgement on Pynchon's attempt, as an
> individual with a commitment to equity and social justice, to empathise with
> the Watts residents (as well as with the local authorities) in the article.

I'm assuming on S/B of  

So, my comments are a pretty harsh judgment of Pynchon's
attempt...

Yes, perhaps even unfair, given as you say, P's commitment,
but all along I have argued that P's heart was in the right
place and my purpose was not to use the obvious advantage of
almost 40 years, but to simply point out that I think P has
developed a more mature understanding of these issues and
this is reflected in his fiction. 

Just as it comes to mind, yesterday I was reading a
collection of Gore Vidal's essays. One of the essays, "the
Second American Revolution",  was published in 1981. I like
the essay a lot, it reminds we quite a lot of VL and it's
very funny, but even 20 years makes Vidal a liar or a very
poor prophet or something. 


> I think some of his flowery literary language is out of place (the
> description of the aeroplanes, for example, is so poetic that it obscures
> the fact of the noise and pollution which the people of Watts are forced to
> endure because their homes are situated right under the flight paths, or,
> rather, the flight path is aimed directly over their homes), and the bit
> about the pre-cardiac Mustang drivers is over the top, but I've always had
> the impression that he actually went there and that he talked to the people
> and tried to give voice to what they were feeling. I think you miss the
> point of the stylistic conceit of the article, which is that when he starts
> to use the "you" construction he is imaginatively empathising with the point
> of view of the people he is writing about (much as he does in his fiction),
> and so (at least some of) the stereotypes you detect are the ones they hold,
> and which he does not endorse himself.


I did not miss that, you have pointed this out in the past
and it's a very important point. 
> 
> But you're entitled to your opinions.
> 
> best