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[Ghetta Life]

MalignD:

>Having just read the Watts article again (first time in a while), what was 
>most striking to me is how poor it is as a piece of journalism — biased, 
>subjective, lacking in rigor, filled with crude generalities about both 
>black and white culture.

>Most disturbing is a hack’s trick he uses numerous times of phony quotes.  
>E.g., this, from "others," (baby):

Given the title of the piece, it’s not surprising or unseemly that Pynchon 
should construct characters and voices to portray “the mind of Watts.”  He’s 
not a journalist.  He’s a fiction writer, constructing voices to tell white 
newspaper readers the “mind” of a culture completely foreign to them.   But 
the obvious question is what experience he has of the inhabitants of Watts.  
Has he really spent time with a number of Watts blacks learning their 
attitudes and experiences, or is he just speculating from afar?   Pynchon 
says:  “Somehow it occurs to very few of them [suburban whites] to leave at 
the Imperial Highway exit for a change, go east instead of west only a few 
blocks, and take a look at Watts. A quick look. The simplest kind of 
beginning. But Watts is country which lies, psychologically, uncounted miles 
further than most whites seem at present willing to travel.”  But Pynchon 
never really presents his credentials as such an adventurer into that world.

>This from "others," or "they," including the "cats":

>Others remember it in terms of music: through much of the rioting seemed to 
>run, they say, a remarkable empathy, or whatever it is that jazz musicians 
>feel on certain nights:  everybody knowing what to do and when to do it 
>without needing a word or a signal:  "You could go up to anybody, the cats, 
>could be in the middle of burning down a store or something, but they’d 
>tell you, explain very calm, just what they were doing, what they were 
>going to do next.  And that’s what they’d do; man, nobody had to give 
>orders."

Here he implies that he has had conversations telling him the above jazz 
analogy.   I have my sincere doubts about anyone telling Pynchon such 
things, mainly because it sounds like something he’d write a story about.  
It’s something he’d LIKE to have happen.  Does anybody really believe that 
there was some sort of unspoken, but commonly felt, coordination of action 
during the riots?  But if one were to believe this description it would lend 
a certain spirituality or inherent nobility to the rioters.  This is 
Pynchon’s noble “Street” action which he describes so often (in GR & 
Vineland) as a wonderful/horrible dance where “pure action” supercedes 
thought.

>As well, the social analysis is both remarkably shallow and painful to 
>read, trafficking in ironies subtle as a hammer to the skull; e.g., this 
>trenchan  bit of telling it like it is:

>"But in the white culture outside, in that creepy world full of precardiac 
>Mustang drivers who scream insults at one another only when the windows are 
>up; of large corporations where Niceguymanship is the standing order 
>regardless of whose executive back one may be endeavoring to stab; of an 
>enormous priest caste of shrinks who counsel moderation and compromise as 
>the answer to all forms of hassle; among so much well-behaved unreality, it 
>is next to impossible to understand how Watts may truly feel about 
>violence."

I think it’s fair of Pynchon to point out what he feels about the shortness 
of insight about his own culture.   The "creepy" cartoon white guy (straw 
man, maybe) he creates is meant to disturb the white guy who reads this 
piece.  It points to hypocracy in his value system within his own world and 
how unreal those values would be if applied to Watts   It’s not meant to be 
subtle, but he makes valid points.

>Or this:

>"The white kid digs hallucination simply because he is conditioned to 
>believe so much in escape, escape as an integral part of life,  because the 
>white L.A. Scene makes accessible to him so many different forms of it.  
>But a Watts kid, brought up in a pocket of reality, looks perhaps not so 
>much for escape as just for some calm, some relaxation.  And beer or wine 
>is good enough for that.  Especially good at the end of a bad day."  
>(Tonight, let it be Lowenbrau.)

But I think this above is crap.  The point that white kids are “spoiled” in 
comparison to Watts kids is true, but that both kids are seeking escapes 
from their “realities” by way of drugs is undeniable.    The reality of 
Watts may be more grim, but why try to compare the relative merits of each 
culture’s drug intake?  It’s just a cheap shot attempting to be profound.

Ghetta

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