Watts article

[jbor]

>> It isn't a tourist brochure, and that's the point.
>> The "historic landmarks" phrase is sardonic 

> 
> There is nothing to indicate that he’s being other
> than descriptive.

He describes a wrecked year-old police command post and vacant lots as
"historic landmarks". Of course the phrase is sardonic. In the same
paragraph he refers to the "Disneyfied" lives and mindset of white L.A.
residents, and labels Watts as "Raceriotland".

>> You seem to expect some breathless travelogue with
>> quirky locals as his tour guides, museum and souvenir
>> information and restaurant and hotel reviews.
> 
> What have I said that would lead you even remotely to
> that bizarre conclusion?

Lighten up. I was having a dig at your continual complaints about how the
descriptions "are very general and unspecific". Tautology aside, they're
specific enough for the purpose and context of the report, and to give the
impression of a first-hand report, as you admit. Any more descriptiveness
and you'd be complaining about redundancy.

>> I also suspect that if his informants thought they
>> were going to be named then they wouldn't have spoken
>> to him.
> 
> For what unfathomable reason?  The “Man” might get
> them?

Fred Smith from Watts said, "Yeah, I've been harassed by the cops." I can
understand why Fred Smith wouldn't want to be named in the article in 1966.
A similar sort of caution and prudency that motivates your anonymity, I'd
imagine.

But the style of attribution ("they", "others" etc) is also deliberate on
Pynchon's part: he's trying to get into "the mind" of Watts, reporting on
the general "mood" of the locals. Maybe he didn't even ask their names;
maybe they didn't offer them. What would be added by identifying speakers
anyway? They're just people he spoke to on the street, in the domino
parlours etc.

I don't think "callow" (*and* "jejune"!) or "flat" are particularly apt
descriptors. And saying it's "good" or "bad" ... it's that sort of
subjectivity that's callow.

As a Sunday magazine feature, it does what it does effectively. More to the
point, it's unique in Pynchon's oeuvre, and it confirmed his personal
support for the Civil Rights movement in no uncertain terms at the height of
that debate. And, I think there is subtlety in his method (lending the Watts
locals a voice in the NYT), in his approach to the issue (the identification
of covert racism alongside more the more overt institutional forms as a root
cause of the social unrest and intercultural conflict), and in the implicit
recommendations he is making.

best