NP? Vineland (andf GR) echoes from a former (?) P-lister

[Doug Millison]

There remain a few of us who read Pynchon the way you
do, here on Pynchon-L.

I quoted your excellent piece on Wright because of the
Vineland echoes I heard in it -- the investigation of
Wright because of his political beliefs/activities,
not entirely unlike the way Pynchon handles a similar
phenomenon in his depiction of the Frenesi family in
Vineland.



--- "Jeffrey St. Clair" <sitka at attbi.com> wrote:
[snip good stuff]
> johnson was
> an admited architectural plagiarist--a testament to
> what Barth, i guess, might
> deride at the Architecture of Exhaustion--except
> they'll never be truly exhausted
> of course. johnson is the perfect servant of the
> ruling classes, moving as
> seemlessly from fascism to global capitalism as von
> Braun did from V-2 to NASA.
> he ripped off Mies --another master of architectural
> oppression, but at least he
> WAS a master and not JUST a clever thief--repeatedly
> and shamelessly. admitted as
> much. which wasn't an act of conscience, but of
> hubris. the pynchon list used to
> have some radicals on it. now it's apparently
> stuffed full of gray little men who
> rush forward to defend fascists like philip johnson.
> what's next? pimping for
> Shell Oil? the Rockefellers? perhaps it's just that
> smug little thugs like Herr
> Otto want to suck the politics out of pynchon &
> reduce the text to academic
> chitchat about fractals and the like. but try as
> they might, they can't do it.
> GR, at least, is a secret history of the forces
> behind the 20th C--war and
> fascist architecture go hand in hand: to build you
> must destroy. ask yourself
> what types of communities were lost to build philip
> johnson's corporate palaces?
> GR is, to my mind, about the reconstructing of the
> world. PJ was one of the
> builders. Nazis/oil companies/missile makers/steel
> towers...all one big machine.
> you can't hide the fact that architecture is all
> about politics--and one look at
> any of PJ's structures gives a clear indication of
> which side he's on. to deny
> that is a fools game. a great big con job.
> 
> over and out.
> 
> jsc

Pynchon does pays attention to architecture in GR,
doesn't he, and elsewhere.

"Brock [...] leaning darkly in above her like any of
the sleek raptors that
decorate fascist architecture." (Vineland, p. 287)


Keep up the good work in Counterpunch and your books. 

Thanks,
Doug 





=====
<www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com>

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