SLSL "Low-Lands" re Man on the Dump

[pynchonoid]

Thanks for digging up that Dugdale and taking the time
to key in some relevant interpretation, Dave, much
appreciated. No doubt "Low-Lands" can support no end
to interpretations and analysis.

Sensitive as Pynchon is when he looks back, in 1984,
to the racist possibilities of his text, Bolingbroke  
may also (both/and/and/etc.) reflect some insight,
however imperfect, into the situation in which
African-Americans found themselves, treated as
second-class citizens in the U.S. in the '50s (as the
Civil Rights movement begins to ramp up).  With his
porkpie hat, Bolingbroke may allude to Pynchon's
beloved Thelonious Monk (and other African-American
jazz masters -- kings of jazz, you might say,  many of
whom share Bolingbroke's alcoholism, including those
that Pynchon mentions in the SLSL Intro and "The Small
Rain" -- of the period). Despite his king's name and
something of a king's dignity,  his realm is down in
the dump with the rest of America's discards and
castaways, not up on the hill with the white American
aristocracy -- this at a time when Jim Crow laws still
made it difficult if not impossible for
African-American musicians (and other performing
artists)to patronize the same restaurants, hotels, or
buy houses in the same neighborhoods, as the "white"
Americans who paid to hear them play. 

I don't think Pynchon's quite as slow a learner as
some here would have him. Only my opinion, of course. 


Dave Monroe:
>From John Dugdale, Thomas Pynchon: Allusive Parables
>of Power (London: Macmillan, 1990), Ch. 1, "Three
>Short Stories," pp. 17-76 ...
> 
>MAN ON THE DUMP: 'LOW-LANDS' [pp. 37-55]
>
[snip good stuff]
> 
>To be continued.  

Please do.

-Doug

P.S.  Happy Birthday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 


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