SLSL 'Low-lands' racism?

[tess marek]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> The thing with Bolingbroke isn't whether or not a
> middle-class white man
> finds the description "racist" or not, or finds it
> offensive, it's how a
> black person would respond to it (and, specifically,
> an American black
> person in 1960). 

Yes, but Pynchon has re-issued the story and he notes
that Modern Readers (by Modern readers I take him to
mean those reading the story in 1984 or after its
re-issue) will be put off. 

A Negro dump watchman in a pork-pie
> hat who is a bigamist
> and an alcoholic is a particularly condescending and
> offensive stereotype.

Right. And the tale he tells? What about that sea
story? Why does P give this tale to a dump's night
watchman named Bolingbroke? What is P saying about
Union labor and US policy in Latin America after WWI? 



> 
> But the issue is more than just the representation
> of the Negro in the
> story. The centre of gravity in 'Low-lands' is white
> middle-class Flange.
> All the other characters (apart from Bodine, who,
> quirky though he is, is
> supposed to be a manifestation of "normal" - i.e.
> white middle-class -
> wackiness), including Nerissa, are like aliens.
> They're either crazed or
> depraved or comic buffoons or inscrutably exotic -
> archetypally 'Other' in
> Foucault's terms. One of the things which Pynchon
> uses to underwrite their
> strangeness, or alterity, is ethnicity.

Right, get out of Jackson Heights. JH is now a model
community. The majority of its citizens are foreign
born and it is great big salad of culture. But it was
once all white bread. As the discrimatory walls broke
down in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Jews and
African Americans were not permitted to move in to the
major housing developments in JH, forget about
Colombians and Indians--Little Colombia and Little
Bombay) those with meand took the white flight to Long
Island. Of course Flange is not typical middle class
long island. He lives up on the gold coast where the
bootleg profits, the Morgans, the Episcopelan Church,
built the world of Gatsby. How he got to be so wealthy
is not explained, but it seems he didn't marry into
it. In any event, as a young guy P thought Flange was
pretty cool. So that pork-pie hat ain't got nothin to
do with Lester. Goodbye! 

 
> McAfee in 'TSI' is a much more rounded character
> than Bolingbroke. 

Sure, but still he suffers from the infantile
stereotype, the alcahaulism, the women all over the
country syndrome, etc. At least in that tale one of
the boys is alos an alcoholic and so the social
critique and irony works. But here in LL, Pynchon
doesn't have that sort of thinking cap on yet. 


Ditto
> with McClintic Sphere in _V._ One thing which I'm
> pretty certain Pynchon did
> read some time shortly after writing 'Low-lands is
> Ralph Ellison's
> _Invisible Man_.
> 
> best
> 

Exactly. 


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