VLVL The Pisk Sisters--JAPs?

[davemarc]

From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>

> it's
> obvious that too are the target of Pynchon's satire,

I agree that Pynchon portrays the sisters satirically or at least comically.

> Although they are from NYC, they probably grew up
> more like Owlglass (a Long Islander)  than Benny (who grew up in NYC)
> ...  we don't know ... we're not told ... but they were and are
> certainly not as working class
> poor as Prairie or her dear friend Che or her boy friend I-24 or any of
> her other pals.  The Mouth Sisters never were working class poor. That's
> obvious enough. And, even after some fairly volatile economic periods of
> the '70's and early '80's, after a divorce for Ditzah (usually a big red
> number on the balance sheet), she is still solvent and financially
> better off than
> most people in the U.S.A.  The Mouth Sisters are members of the
> privileged college or professional class.

There's some fishing around here on the way to that last sentence. At this
point in the book, I would agree that it's hard to tell what their economic
background is. There's no sense in taking Ditzah's post-divorce economic
solvency in the 1980s and then using it to make the retroactive claim that,
that decades earlier, she and her sister came from privileged backgrounds. I
just don't see the rationale that would justify describing them as
privileged. Much of the other criteria that has so far been applied
(Tupperware, Danish, etc.) does not, in fact, signify a privileged
background. So I am reluctant to rush to judgment on this question--though I
do doubt that the sisters were from any kind of very privileged background
(especially in a country where a truly "privileged" radical of that period
would be someone like Patty Hearst).

Furthermore, at least in the passages under question, the Pisks
don't remind me very much of Rachel from V. except that they're from the New
York area, from a
Jewish background, and somewhat close in age (though probably
younger). They might well be less assimilated, too, judging from their
Yiddishy names, their Yiddish-inflected sentences, and their feelings about
New York City (Old World) vs. California (New World).

> So why do they want to "Smash
> the State"? Rather than getting bogged down is all this silly shit about
> who knows what about living in California and NYC and the pizza and the
> pastries and authoritative dictionary kicking shit, why not compare the
> characters in the book? DL and Sledge? The ass kickers. Not college
> kids, right? How about Howie and Mirage?

For my part, I was merely taking the opportunity to contextualize some NYC
and California references, hoping to add to subscriber appreciation of
the section being scrutinized. The discussion is taking longer than I would
have preferred, but I'm sure the posts have been appropriate for this forum.

d.