Watts article "you"

[jbor]

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

Should have added (while I correct my typos below) that I don't think there
was much likelihood that any of the kids he spoke to in Watts would have
known who he was. I think that the greater risk by far -- one he must have
realised he was taking -- was in putting his name on this article's by-line.

And, yes, it would be interesting to investigate whether there were letters
to the editor in response to the 'Watts' piece. It's something I'll check it
out; can't promise when.

best

>> And sorry, jbor, for my mistake re your feelings vis-a-vis the relationship
>> of the article to travel pieces.
> 
> No problem. That relationship would have to be parodic, wouldn't it, if
> there is one? But I do agree that one of the implicit recommendations
> Pynchon offers for healing the widening rift between the "two cultures" -- and
> he's very specific about what those two cultures are in L.A. in 1966 -- is
> that whites visit Watts and interact on a personal basis with the locals. I
> think that's one aspect of the reader-address "you" -- those readers who are
> open-eyed to the real causes of the poverty and anger in Watts, and who are
> sympathetic to the idea of trying to promote intercultural harmony.
> 
> The other aspect of the reader-address "you" is more hard-headed and
> confrontational. It's about getting up the noses of "the little man" -- the
> white audience reading the article in the NYT Magazine who are prone to the
> sort of patronising blame-the-victim mentality or covert racism he describes
> in the article -- trying to get them to wake up to their own
> prejudices: that fantasy image of the black outlaw vigilante (à la Mailer)
> they cling to, either in awe or contempt; the unflagging belief in the
> superiority of their own "reality" and of how it's the black person's
> responsibility to fit in with "our" culture, to fall into line etc etc.
> 
> best
>