SLSL 'Low-lands' racism?

[jbor]

on 15/1/03 6:03 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> "All right, there were gypsies around. He remembered back in his childhood
> that they used to camp out on the deserted areas of beach along the north
> shore. He thought by now they had all gone; somehow he was glad they had
> not. It suited some half-felt sense of fitness; it was right that there
> should be gypsies living in the dump (...)." (71.27-33)
> 
> Presenting gypsies as some midgets living with the rats in the dumb, is this
> racism or isn't the text somewhat revealing about our own prejudices if we
> see nothing to object to in this image. Like Flange we all have some
> romanticised imagination of gypsy-living (on the beach) somewhere in the
> back of our minds while at the same time as grown-ups we accept that gypsies
> are treated as social waste, in fact are a marginalised and discriminated
> minority.

I think what's supposed to be happening is some romanticisation of "the
dump", transforming it from a dirty, preterite place full of discarded and
forgotten objects into a locus of (human) possibilities - it's an early
version of that characteristic waste/detritus motif which preoccupies
Pynchon for the next decade and a half at least, and which DeLillo attempts
to emulate (or swipe) later on in his fictional offerings. "All the shit is
transmuted to gold" &c.

The crack about it occurring to Flange that he might discuss "the Midget
Problem" with Nerissa is pretty supercilious though, patronising and
offensive to both minorities it alludes to.

best