Watts article

[jbor]

>> Otoh, the suggestion that there's nothing in the article to suggest that
>> Pynchon even went to Watts is just plain stoopid.
> 
> I agree that he implies that he's been to Watts by way of describing
> conversations he's had there, but he is a bit cavalier about describing
> these conversations, as MalignD points out.  Sometimes he "quotes" what seem
> to be composite "common-Watt's-man" sentiments.  Other times  he says some
> "kid" or "cat" or "people."  He's free to do so, but sometimes his
> descriptions of conversations seem self-serving to his article's ends.  And
> I really have a hard time believing anyone told him that Jazz/Riot analogy.
> 
> It would have been nice if he'd said "I went to Watts "X" number of days (or
> nights) and talked to subjects "A, B, & C" at such and such a place and this
> is what I found..."

I do understand what you're saying, but I think all that prosaic stuff is
implicit anyway and unnecessary. Plus I think part of what he's doing is
removing himself from the report, especially the Watts bits, and thereby
striving for a type of objectivity or "reality": trying to avoid any sense
of an "observer effect" encroaching on the conversation. I don't have a
problem with the way the Watts locals speak in the article -- both the
sentiments and the language ring true. The exaggerations and sarcasm in the
descriptions of the white L.A. scene are over-the-top, as I've said, but
they're also funny and there is a kernel of truth in most of it. I agree
with you on the point that "reality" for the Watts folk is poverty (and
oppression and discrimination, I'd add). I think that the "unreality" of the
L.A. Scene is the way they've bought into the whole consumerist trip --
middle-aged men in their sports cars cruising the strip for some "action",
lives ruled by images from pop songs and tv and magazine ads and
psychotherapy and career ambition and Hollywood glitz and glam. In fact, the
whole Disneyfication theme reminds me a lot of Baudrillard and his
simulacrum.

best