Watts article

[jbor]

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

The really interesting thing about it is the way that Pynchon's article,
even 38 years later, still manages to get up the nose of some middle class
white boys -- quick to latch on to any fault, real or imaginary, by which to
resist the whole essay and so try to defend the superiority of their
"reality" and, correspondingly perhaps, the reality of their "superiority".

I'd be interested to hear what, precisely, the relationship between the
'Watts' article and Mailer's 'The White Negro' is meant to be. Pynchon's
article is comprehensible, for a start, and it doesn't continually drift off
into seemingly drug-induced reveries; there's not the faintest hint of a
fawning hipster, black sex-machine, or jazz as "the music of orgasm" either.
In fact, Pynchon seems to be working pretty darn hard to resist some of
Mailer's stereotypes; it's especially noticeable in that he does
characterise himself as a "hipster" and jazz aficionado elsewhere, and
often. Wouldn't James Baldwin's response to Mailer, or even Ralph Ellison's
_Invisible Man_, be more applicable? It's Ishmael Reed, remember, rather
than Mailer, to whom we are directed in GR.

best

on 27/9/04 7:44 AM, jbor wrote:

> I'd still argue that the potential "galvanising" effect on public attitudes
> of a short story in the Post is less than that of the 'Watts' article,
> regardless of whether the Post had a wider circulation and/or readership,
> which I don't know. I've been making the point all along that there is a
> direct relationship between 'The Secret Integration' and the 'Watts' piece.
> Subsequent back-pedalling aside, the counter-argument or flamebait being
> advanced in response to the above was that the story excerpts in Esquire and
> Cavalier, and the novels, reached as wide an audience as did the 'Watts'
> article.