Organ-eyes Crime

[joeallonby]

on 11/1/04 7:00 PM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 18:00, joeallonby wrote:
>> on 11/1/04 4:48 PM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 13:27, joeallonby wrote:
>>>> on 11/1/04 12:16 PM, RuudSaurins at aol.com at RuudSaurins at aol.com wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Methinx...
>>>>> ...that TRP finds a little bit of organized crime nearly everywhere he
>>>>> looks.
>>>>> The street-level economy of post-war Europe was "black-marketeer" in
>>>>> character, while the allied military-industrial-congressional complex
>>>>> dispensed their generosity among corporate and governmental venues.  To
>>>>> the
>>>>> preterite observer it all appears organized as well as criminal.  This is
>>>>> where TRP chose to stage much of GR.
>>>>> truly,
>>>>> ruud
>>>> 
>>>> Think of the smugglers and drug dealers in GR.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Slothrup's involvement in smuggling and dope dealing very pynchonianly
>>> serves to set up the Saure/Gustav philosophical/aesthetic/semiotic
>>> disputation on binary-opposite tastes in music and marijuana.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> And the "when I listen to Beethoven, I feel like invading Poland" line is
>> one of the funniest in the book.
> 
> The referent here would seem to be not merely the invasion of Poland,
> but Modernism and Seriousness.
> 
> 
> 
So is he equating Rossini with Modernism? Is he equating Modernism with fun?
Is this a value judgement? If so, is it Pynchon's value spoken through the
character of the drug dealer? Or is it just character development of the
drug dealer? Is it intended to show the triumph of low culture or its
essential simplistic shallowness? And/or a clever putdown of a pompous ass
who is full of himself?