It's about time to stop taking the subway. . . .//Werner Herzog dwarf movie

Cometman cometman_98 at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 3 00:18:25 CDT 2007


--- robinlandseadel wrote:
> 
> . . . .reading Pynchon includes conspiracies up the wazoo. In for a
> dime. . . .

"Includes" yes - among many other threads to follow as well.
(There's probably a bunch of ruminations that await a
quiet afternoon, and/or a term-paper obligation,
in re the significance of the things Pynchon segues AWAY
from his brilliant conspiracy exegeses INTO...like the 
Polish undertaker in the boat...wtf, eh?...and/or the
textual events that precede and maybe provoke the
disquisitions into Them...)

"Focuses solely on?" - not so much, IMHO
...really it's "sore-thumb" central only 
in 49 & GR, and those books still use it to point beyond, 
to transcendence:
"rise by means of that by means of which one falls" (Tantra?)

In Lot 49 - as Dave (and Petillon) pointed out - 
what is found is the ability to see what was there all along: 
an awareness of the preterite, 
an awareness of one's heritage (the estate one executes), 
an awareness of the existence of non-mainstream people, 
movements, emotions, 
and thereby - something which will stay with Oedipa and 
with me as reader) - the knowledge that mainstream consensus 
reality* is insufficient to describe human experience 
(and, by Goedel, might always be!)

In GR, again we can relate to the many plots afoot, and
again the main quest is of coming to grips with one's
heritage and how it determines current actions...
in this book, maybe, is where OBA unambiguously
raises his true colors as historical writer.  
(I can't get over that self-description**
in the solidarity editorial letter he wrote last year!)

*whatever that is (-;

** 

-- but, still, Pynchon on the subway!  Scooting all over
town, not riding some great-writer limo...
...and/or walking (like Dickens?) as we saw in that YouTube thing,
briskly, orderly mustache (trimmed as dutifully as Hector's? "15
minutes of precious time each day")  

...yeah, that's right, I think in addition to a strong
liberal tendency, there's a bit of old Hector in TRP too...
watched "Even Dwarfs Started Small", a Werner Herzog movie
- appalled by what seemed to be a real cockfight -
but the point was, and I think Slothrop has this thought
somewhere ("not sure he didn't after all prefer to
have that Purpose") is that not all "casting off the
shackles of conventionality and destroying the authority
structure" is good, in fact it may end up as predictable 
as that truck they send around in circles,
and as sad as whatever they did to that camel...


(also saw Fitzcarraldo years ago, that Werner Herzog is a maniac!) 






"Benny. How is the pimping business, hyeugh, hyeugh." - Pig Bodine

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