antw. Re: MDDM Washington & Gershom

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

jbor schrieb:

> I can understand that these positive elements in the portrayal of GW in
> _M&D_ might have come as a shock to some, but it's actually very consistent
> with both the historical record and with the stance Pynchon takes on
> black-white relations throughout his work.


 let me quote from an article ("pynchon's politics: the presence of an absence", 
 here page 56) charlene once was so friendly to send me ... the passage refers 
 to the watts essay:

 "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 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.'

 the black/white situation can also be seen as an extension of the  
 old-dynasty/new-dynasty tension ..." 
         
 "surely hiphop was never a problem a harlem, only in boston ..."

      (slim shady: white america. cf. "the eminem show", 2002)

 "let's do the math, if i was black i would've sold half, i ain't have to 
 graduate from lincoln high school to know that ..."



                                            take two and pass! kfl *