The Pisk Sisters--JAPs?

[cfalbert]

"At piska" is swedish for to whip or flog...........echoes of Marquis de 
Sod......


love,
cfa



At 11:19 AM 1/6/04, you wrote:
>From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
> >
> > Cf. also the Pisk sisters with "their hair in matching oversize Jewish
> > Afros" (196.18-19). Arguable, I realise, but mentioned not so much an
>ethnic
> > label as the name of the 'do. Note how the phrasing ("hair in",
>"matching",
> > "oversize") implies that it's the work of a hairdresser rather than
> > something which has grown naturally. Don't imagine those "battle fatigues"
> > they were "going around in" were cheap either.
> >
>It's easily imaginable. As I understand it, battle fatigues were typically
>obtained cheap at Army surplus stores.
>
>Jewfros--especially those of the "oversize" variety--are typically the
>product of avoiding hairdressers as long as one can bear.
>
>As far as Danish being a type of pastry (and therefore a confection of
>privileged class), they're as much a type of pastry as donuts. In other
>words, they're not at all associated with privilege. They're a common
>breakfast pastry--at least they are in New York City.
>
>In the passages under discussion there is no indication that the Pisks
>purchased expensive new television sets. Much of the equipment used by the
>Pisks is among the assets of the Kollective (p. 197). However, some of their
>own tools (paper clips, Scotch tape, their own teeth and nails) are clearly
>low-budget.
>
>Also note that the Pisks specifically remember "apartment living" in NYC as
>"warm and neighborly." That's different from remembering the whole of NYC
>that way, or perceiving it through the eyes of an outsider. It's quite
>possible that kids growing up in an apartment building in the 1950s and
>1960s would recall their apartment building as being a warm and neighborly
>environment and find the less intimate living conditions in California to be
>"cold and distant."
>
>The Pisks carp about the West Coast world of cars, pet therapy, I. Magnin,
>and the "easy-come easy-go" sex lives of surfers. Between the two of them,
>they miss Danish, warmth and neighborliness, a standard of big and bustling
>NYC department store set by the middle-class Macy's, and New York City as a
>sentimentalized whole: "California's only reality for them was to be found
>in the million ways it failed to be New York."
>
>Overall, the Pisks seem rooted in a cherished middle-class (even lower
>middle-class) NYC background. Politically committed middle-class sisters
>might well have traveled cross-country to a California city that was a
>hotbed of radicalism. They wouldn't have had to be privileged to do that.
>
>There was a mention on this listserv that the sisters were from the Bronx.
>Is there anything in the text that supports that? Does it specify the
>neighborhood?
>
>d.
>
>PS: Regarding pizza and bagels: Any adult Jewish New Yorker in
>California--especially prior to 1985--would understandably miss Big Apple
>versions of both foods. "Authentic" New York bagels--boiled, with a
>rock-hard crust and airpockets unevenly distributed within--were even
>becoming something of a rarity in NYC at that time. (Don't get me started
>about bialies!) And even today, a New Yorker in California might well miss
>the easy availability of Danish to go with that morning coffee. (I just got
>a tiny earful about that from a New Yorker who has lately spent chunks of
>time in Manhattan, Monterey, and Moscow.)