Thank Goodness

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "tyro tortoise" <tyrotortoise at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: Thank Goodness


>
> --- Otto <ottosell at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
>  Why does he insert theoretical
> > speculation
> > > about race and power in this paragraph?
> > >
> >
> > Because race/power relations are present in his
> > fiction.
>
> And that's why he skips into theoretical speculation
> about race and power?
> It reads a lot like that vague metaphor about the new
> left. It's vague. It doesn't fit in with what he has
> been discusssing.
>

Well, seems as if there are different opinions about this. I think it fits
best.

> He's talking about "Lowlands." He's talking about his
> language and a set of assumptions (sexist, racist,
> neo-fascist) that he grew up on. Not unlike Grover in
> TSI he grew up reading racist, sexist, neo-fascist
> books. Unfortunately, it seems, young Tom was not boy
> genius enough to see that the adventure books and
> comics he was reading were racist, sexist,
> neo-fascist.

Who was?

> He seems to have lacked not only Grover's intellectual
> revulsion to racism, but Tim's "low brow" humanistic
> intuition.
>
> By the time Pynchon writes TSI and the Watts essay he
> has realized that he has been loaded up with racist,
> sexist, neo-fascist language and attitudes.
>

Right, like we all are/were.

> His half excuse half apology, that it was common to
> talk that way, that these were the attitudes of the
> day, that he grew up reading James Bond (Dave M.
> thanks for the notes on Bond/England/JFK) and that the
> Cold War soon to be Kennedy militartism had every boy
> in America wanting to kick some third world ass and
> fly to the moon is bull shit. You couldn't talk that
> way where I come from, brother. But at least he's
> being candid about it. That is, until he introduces
> that rediculous theoretical speculative half excuse
> about racical differences and power.
>
> On race and class, Tom Swift was a Slow Learner boys
> and girls. I admire him for addressing this in the
> Introduction. TSI and the Watts essay, while still
> blockheaded, are at least attempts to reverse his
> racism and look deeper in and out. But this statement
> in Introduction, in addition to its being out of place
> and vague,  is disturbing because it tells me that Tom
> hasn't really learned much about race at all.
>

I disagree, TSI is a step forward, and the p.12-statement just says (imo)
that racial differences are just as useful to some people as social ones.

>
> The unfortunate thing about newspaper adventure strips
> is that their artistic heyday was probably in the
> 1930s and 1940s and, like Golden Age comicbooks
> themselves,
> it means that they reflect antiquated attitudes. With
> Terry and the Pirates set in the exotic Far East, you
> can't avoid noticing an underlying racism. Right in
> the opening strip we meet a series regular, Connie --
> Terry and Pat's comic-relief Chinese manservant.
> Connie, unlike everyone else, isn't drawn particularly
>  alistic; with his huge teeth and big ears, he's a
> caricature. Dimwitted and goofy, he's more
> uncomfortable that amusing. Though, to be fair, he is
> portrayed as having a good heart. Which is better than
> most of the other Asian characters, who are drawn less
> grotesquely, but are generally villains. Throw in
> ostensibly good guys occasionally using racial slurs
> and it's enough to make most modern readers cringe...
> If we dismissed every book or movie that was tainted
> by racism (or sexism), we'd eliminate 60 percent of
> stories told prior to, say, the mid-1950s at least.
>

I agree to the last. The hero-business in pre-modernist literature, comics
and movies is racist and sexist.

Otto

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