VLVL Pynchon's infiltrated narration

[Dave Monroe]

Oh, dear ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> _TV Guide_ a "right-wing weekly"? Trenchant media
> criticism that. 

You know exactly what I'm referring to.  The various
observations beforehand, which are not all too far off
yr crit lit on the (and like) subject(s), albeit more
strongly and directly worded.  Must I search the
Monroe College Library?  In storage, but I've other
options, if need be.  Not to mention that TVG was,
since 1988 at least (too late perhaps for the
narrative of Vineland, but well in time for its
publication--and I don't believe it was all too
different before the change of hands) a Rupert Murdoch
holding.  But, for the record, "trenchant" is your bit
of sarcasm.  Me, I wrote "nifty" ...

> I think Terrance is spot on in noting that it's
> Frenesi's own absorption of and obsession with the
> nuances of tv cop actors like Raymond Burr and Tige
> Andrews which is ironically on display here. Note
> also that 'Ironside' and 'Hill Street Blues' are
> both highpoints of the genre, and that all three
> shows tackled issues of police and government
> corruption and provided gritty and reasonably even-
> handed representations of their respective times and
> settings, as well as of the inter-relationships
> between crime and crime enforcement therein.

So you've seen a lot of either, then?  No, for a
passing paragraph, "spoken" by a fictional chracter in
character, it's fairly astute, esp. given the genre as
a whole.  But I do think a point is made of rattling
off some of the more "liberal," "humanist," whatever
shows precisely as examples that nonetheless fall into
"conservative" (to perhaps cryptofascist) pitfalls
nonetheless.  As perhaps does Hector. 
"Cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-job."  Et al. 
This is hardly not in keeping with something I think
you 'n' Terry 'n' I have agreed on all along here,
that theme of, say, the cooptation of subversion, the
countersubversion of subversion, whatever, that runs
as a red thread throught Pynchon's fiction.  We seem
rather to disagree about from wht apparent position or
thereabouts Pynchon might be observing, falling along,
that lineage ...

> No-one has said it does this, of course, nor does
> one need to in order to note that Frenesi's knee-
> jerk prejudice against "working cops" like Hector
> is way off-beam.

Huh?  "Knee-jerk"?  "Prejudice," even ...

> As I said, I don't even think she's 100% sincere
> about it herself; there's an element of self-
> conscious self-parody ...

That's all over them Pynchonian texts, by the way ...

> ... if not self-deceit, in her thinking here.
> Considering her long and illustrious career as a
> police informer and infiltrator -- betrayal is also
> a major theme (if not *the* major theme) of this
> novel, recall -- she's also being quite
> hypocritical. 

This, again, is a Theme here.  But I'd further throw
in "also an element of becoming self-aware" as well
here.  The recognition of those Ideological Apparati,
and how they serve one's self-delusions ...

> It's not as though we're not supposed to notice
that,
> surely? Or accept that Frenesi has forgotten about
> her past?

I love these periodic rhetorical question here, by the
way.  Capital-R Rhetoric ...
 
> It's worth noting, too, that the "police state"
> never actually eventuates, neither in the novel nor
> out.

He writes from Down Under ...


	
		
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