TPPM Watts: the Gospel of Progress versus Watts the Real

[Paul Mackin]

One notices early on the dichotomy drawn between the "real" Watts and
"unreal" White L.A.

"Watts lies impacted in the heart of this white fantasy. It is, by
contrast, a pocket of bitter reality."

Is the "unreality" of the whites mainly confined to the black
perception. Is it also Pynchon's perception? Sometimes it's hard to
distinquish in P's writing between the depiction of someone else's
thought from his own (we ran into this problem with the 1984
introduction). I can only say for sure that as a former white middle
class resident of L.A. and living not too many blocks north of Watts I
always thought of myself and my neighborhood as quite real. Despite what
might havwe been displayed on TV.

Be that as it may, I DO I think the "unreality of white L.A." does have
application to Pynchon's own view, atleast for rhetorical purposes. It's
toward the end of the essay where P really comes to life on this issue.
We are told that the white (and black too) poverty warriors, though they
persist and try to remain optimistic ("life has a way of surprising us")
are deathly afraid ("more terrified of failure than of death") that
their programs to bring some kind of unity between the Watts and and the
surrounding citizenry and an end to violence is essentially doomed. The
poor of Watts of course have known all along that no "progress" of this
sort or any other sort is going to happen. They do not even consider the
August riot as abnormal nor do they mind talking about it.

"There is hardly a person in Watts now who finds [the August riot]
painful to talk about, or who regrets that it happened--unless he lost
somebody."

And it gets better. 

"Watts has been able to resist the unreal"


I do believe that the unreality of the whites is for pynchon the
unreality of the "idea of progress." In this case progress only in a
specific area of endeaver but wait . . . .

It was to be many a year before the 30-year old Pynchon would write his
major Enlightenment book. However in the sixties there was already a lot
of critique of the Enlightenment going on which P would surely have
picked up on. Marcuse's One Demensional Man could have started him along
the way. 

So . . . can we not take the denoument of the Watts essay--the seemingly
inevitable failure to achieve racial harmony--as a metonomy for the
failure of the gospel of progress in general--the gospel of progress as
rooted in the Enlightenment.  I certainly think we can.

Do I approve of this line of thinking. No, I can't say that I really do.
(I apologize to Pynchon in advance in case he writes to the p-list
saying I've misinterpreted him)

Letting middle class respectablity and all that it entails stand for the
Enlightenment and poor black survival culture stand for the world of the
pre-Enlightenment with all its sadly missed virtues leaves a lot to be
desired. Which I haven't time to go into right now. But . . .