VV(18): "Tourists"

[Dave Monroe]

"This is a curious country, populated only by a breed
called 'tourists.'  Its landscape is one of inanimate
monuments and buildings ..." (V., Ch, 14, Sec. ii, p.
408)

First off, yr very welcome, David.  There seem to be
reasons why I was immediately reminded of Baudelaire,
the Symbolists, the Decadents, et al., when we started
in on V., and now things seem to be going off like
landmines.  Everywhere I step ... 

Though attend to that romanticist/symbolist/decadent
death aesthetic thing, the "Tristan-and-Iseult theme,"
"'the act of love and the act of death are one''" (p.
410), indeed (and I forgot to grab my Rougemont,
Terrance, but I'll post from it shortly ...).  That's
a Concern here, elsewhere, esp. for Pynchon ...

de Rougemont, Denis.  Love in the Western World.
   Trans. Montgomery Belgion.  Princeton, NJ:
   Princeton UP, 1956.

Fiedler, Leslie.  Love and Death in the American
   Novel.  New York: Criterion, 1960.

The former is kindly kept in print by PUP ...

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/426.html

The latter is available once again under the auspices
of the very good people indeed at Dalkey Archive ...

http://www.centerforbookculture.org/dalkey/backlist/fiedler.html

Will post from both shortly ...

On that east/west thing Doug brings up, do see ...

Longxi, Zhang.  "The Tao and the Logos: Notes on
   Derrida's Critique of Logocentrism."  Critical
   Inquiry, Vol. 11, No. 3 (March 1985): 384-98.

It, of course, ain't so cut 'n' dried, which is why
I'm suspect of any assertions of a simple
revalorization on Pynchon's part.  He operates
knowingly, resignedly, ineviatbly from "within"
Western, Christian culture, discourse, what have you
...

Anyway, again, not much time today, but, quickly, from
Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the
Leisure Class (New York: Schocken, 1977),
"Introduction," pp. 1-16 ...

"The progress of modernity ('modernization') depends
on its very sense of instability and inauthenticity. 
For moderns, reality and authenticity are thought to
be elsewhere; in other historical periods and in other
cultures, in purer, simpler lifestyles.  In other
words, the concern of moderns for 'naturalness,' their
nostalgia and tehir search for authenticity are not
merely casual and somewhat decadent, though harmless,
attachments to the souvernirs of destroyed cultures
and dead epochs.  They are also components of the
conquering spirit of modernity--the grounds of its
unifying consciousness.
   "The central thesis of this book holds the
empirical and ideological expansion of modern society
to be intimately linked in diverse ways to modern mass
leisure, especially to international tourism." (p. 3)

Cf. ...

"More than this it is two-dimenional, as is the
Street, as are the pages and maps of those little red
handbooks." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. ii, p. 409)

"Tourism thus is supranational, like the Catholic
Church, and perhaps the most absolute communion we
know on earth: for its memebrs American, German,
Italian, whatever, the Tour Eiffel, Pyramids, and
Campanile all evoke identical responses from them;
their Bible is clearly written and does not admit of
private inetrpretation; they share the same
landscapes, the same inconveniences; live by the same
pellucid time-scale.  They are the Street's own."
(ibid.)

Keep in mind, "Catholic" = "universal."  And I've
already addressed "The Distribution of Time" to some
extent ...

--- David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks David.
> 
> This text is the perfect accompaniment to this
> chapter and the Tourist theme.  Continual movement
> hastened by dissatisfaction with the present and 
> a need to be entertained by the sights of the next
> location are at the heart of the Tourist world of V.
 
> The concept of Time is also thus evoked by the 
> need for the next thing.  This is why when V. falls
> in love she leaves the realm of Tourism "now 
> suddenly found herself excommunicated: bounced 
> unceremoniously into the null-time of human love"
> V. has found contentment, and thus has lost her need
> to move on and her perception of Time.  "His 
> description of them is a well-composed and ageless 
> still-life of love at one of its many extremes." 
> This description is apt. For V. Time has stood
> still.  The present is enough.

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