Sarkozy and Me

[Otto]

Sarkozy and Me
By Mary Grabar
Sunday, May 13, 2007

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