Pynchon mentioned

[Ya Sam]

In the article 'Sarkozy and Me'

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MaryGrabar/2007/05/13/sarkozy_and_me



'But then again the New York Times editors never have to worry about such 
things as doing blue-collar work or sending their kids to violent inner-city 
schools. In fact, they have a long tradition of publishing contemplative 
pieces on rioting by literary luminaries like Thomas Pynchon, who, in 1966, 
the year after the Watts riots, observed “white culture,” a “creepy world 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.” We white people are so darn repressed…so unlike those authentic 
black folks who are much closer to nature and their primal, savage selves. 
Pynchon here does a riff on Norman Mailer’s 1957 The White Negro. Pynchon, 
descendent of Puritans and scion of a family fortune, then goes on to define 
the authentic black culture of Watts: “In terms of strict reality, violence 
may be a means to getting money, for example, no more dishonest than 
collecting exorbitant carrying charges from a customer on relief, as white 
merchants here still do.” In fact, “Far from a sickness, violence may be an 
attempt to communicate, or to be who you really are.” Can’t expect them to 
use linear language the way white people do. Pynchon sums up his poetic 
reverie with, “As this summer warms them up, last August’s riot is being 
remembered less as chaos and more as art. Some talk now of a balletic 
quality to it, a coordinated and graceful drawing of cops away from the 
center of the action, a scattering of The Man’s power, either with real 
incidents or false alarms.” I imagine Buffy up in her mod Manhattan 
penthouse saying to Chad, “Darling, you must read this! Maybe we can get our 
chauffeur to drive us through Watts for a performance.”

Pynchon is like the 25-year-old graduate student caught up in Marxist theory 
while living off the largesse of his parents, whom he indirectly indicts 
through his razing of all remnants of Western civilization. I remember such 
a fellow MFA student expounding on Marxism and writing a Whitman-esque ode 
to herself about shaking the hand of a homeless man and giving him a few 
dollars. '

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