Murdered By Capitalism - TRP Support Notice

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Just finished "Murdered by Capitalism." John Ross appears
to possess Zoyd Wheeler's DNA, at least this part:

                New dope money washed through county commerce---
                we're talking millions a year. With the moolah came 
                the cocaine and everybody who was anybody choogled 
                around in some sort of me-first daze. Me? I was mostly 
                out of the loop, subsisting solely on the sale of my food 
                stamps or bulb-farm minimum-wage stoop labor, 
                moonlighting so to speak as town clown and 
                poet in residence. . . .

                . . . .After repeated appeals, the government of Uncle Sam 
                finally conceded me five hundred bucks in crazy money 
                each month, most of which was consumed in one excess 
                or another by the tenth calendar day. When summoned 
                by the government offices to explain my psychosis, I would 
                sometimes pull out my pecker and piss on the nearest 
                portrait of the president.
                John Ross, Murdered by Capitalism pg 278

John Ross name-checks the Anderson Valley Advertiser on 287 and
Judi Bari on 274:

                It was Capitalism that killed the forests and those who 
                defended them and it was Capitalism that bombed Judi 
                Bari and sent her to an early grave. When Judi lay on 
                her death bed, propped up on pillows and looking hared 
                at the other side, she splayed a spidery hand on Dennis
                 Cunningham's wrist and whispered legal instructions. 
                "Never Settle," she told her laywer. "Never Settle!"  ibid, 274

While those particular references may mean little to you, my mom
(who now lives in Trinidad, CA) was friends with both Judi Bari and 
Bruce Patterson, both well known rabble-rousers within the semi
non-fictional region used as a staging area for "Vineland". The 
Anderson Valley Advertiser was the source for that well-known
Pynchon red herring, Wanda Tinasky. And a number of articles 
by John Ross.

http://www.theava.com/
http://www.oilempire.us/anderson.html


There's an interesting reference to "The Crying of Lot 49" on page 267:

               The metabolisms of the dead are hopelessly occluded by decay 
               and darkness. Although my calibrations were not amiss, 
               re-establishing contact with E. B. Schnaubelt (if that indeed was 
               his true name), was not instantaneous. The hours limped by, 
               the rain drizzled and squalled. Retreating to Sidney's, I 
               purlioned a tarp and strung it around Schnaubelt's plot as if it 
               were a live-in construction area, or one of those strange tents 
               Thomas Pynchon had noted up in the telephone wires in 
               The Crying of Lot 49. ibid, 267

And then there's the stuff that's directly related to "Against the Day",
all the dirt on the Haymarket bomb, active worship of dynamite as 
the great social equalizer and:

               "We switched identities at the train station, remember? I became 
               Eddie and Eddie became me and caught a train to Canada, 
               Eventually, he made his way to Buenos Aires and opened a 
               metal shop in the port and fashioned a bomb or two for the 
               dockworkers' union whenever they need a boost." ibid, 337/338

There's lots more, mostly connected to AtD but also bound up with Vineland 
as well. We just might have a primary source here. There's the multiple
name-checks, and Mr. Ross chooses to place Pynchon in his litany of
Anarchist Icons and loons:

                 Sasha Berkman and Timothy Leary
                 smoked a joint and got terribly cheery,
                 Zippy the Pinhead and the Molly McGuires
                 roasted Pigasis over the bonfire,
                 "No pork!" Bob Dylan and Ralph Nader protested,
                 "Como no!" Sub Marcos and the Sla contested.
                 Dorthy Day and the Weather Underground.
                 Patty Hearst and Bishop Romero even got down,
                 Wilhelm Reich invited Hegel to his orgone box,
                 rocked the old philosopher down to his socks,
                 Houdini taught George and Jonathan to to disappear,
                 Thomas Pynchon polished the last keg of beer. . . 
                 ibid, pg 343

               Laura: 
               Really interesting.  Maybe the first glimmer of Webb 
               Traverse came into being when TRP lived near 
               Schnaubelt's tombstone and heard his story.

               Dave Monroe:
               "It is a ripsnorting and honorable account of an
               outlaw tradition in American politics which too seldom
               gets past the bouncers at the gateways of our national
               narrative."

               --Thomas Pynchon

http://www.nationbooks.org/book.mhtml?t=ross

http://www.nationbooks.org/backlist.mhtml
-----Original Message-----
>From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
>Sent: Mar 4, 2007 9:44 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: RE: Murdered By Capitalism - TRP Support Notice
>
>        Michel :
>        Anyone ever seen this?
>
>        Pynchon, Thomas. Support notice. /Murdered by Capitalism: A Memoir of 
>        150 Years of Life and Death on the American Left/, by John Ross. New 
>        York: Nation Books, 2004. Unnumbered third page.
>
>        Just curious.
>
>        Michel.
>
>Try this:
>
>http://tinyurl.com/3dkeac
>
>It should lead you to the relevant page.