Watts article

[jbor]

Oops, should've included the link:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html

For Pynchon's authorial self-identification with "the glozing neuters of the
world" see GR 677, 738 &c.

best

on 24/9/04 9:03 AM, jbor wrote:

> The shifting second person pronoun in the Watts essay preempts its literary
> usage in GR. Pynchon's article aligns most notably with 'The Secret
> Integration', not _Lot 49_, and I'd say it's that story that prompted
> Kirkpatrick Sale to ask Pynchon to write the piece.
> 
> The article exemplifies the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was the one
> cause in the '60s that Pynchon was committed enough to to pull himself away
> from his glozing neuterdom and to get out and do. A lot of readers don't
> like to accept this fact, for whatever reasons, but there it is. It is,
> after all, a piece of investigative journalism, Pynchon's only foray into
> that field. Its purpose is to "journey into the mind[s]" -- positing a sort
> of communal "mind" in the article's title -- of the people of Watts and
> Pynchon has done this by going there and talking to them and then presenting
> their viewpoints and opinions to the reading public, both white and black,
> in the New York Times Magazine. Far from positioning himself or his reader
> as a tourist, his articulation of grammar, narrative structure and
> descriptive language is aimed at getting the reader to empathise with the
> Watts residents (and, momentarily, police, social workers etc), and to show
> these readers some of the complexities of the situation in Watts and remind
> them that the closest they will ever get to this unhappy place is in those
> planes that hang in the air overhead every twenty minutes or so (because, of
> course, this impoverished minority community is directly on the flight path)
> -- and that, perhaps, this is part of the problem. The Simon Rodia and
> Festival of the Arts stuff is likewise an ironic counterpoint, and it
> provides a useful insight into Pynchon's own literary method, and his
> fascination with "waste" and found objects.
> 
> It's a powerful and effective piece of writing; my only criticism is that
> Pynchon sometimes allows literary fanciness too much rein, to the point
> where it almost overwhelms the exposition and critique.