AtD: "ICH BIN EIN BERLINER!" (626)

[Dave Monroe]

On 11/23/07, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

> re. Pynchon & Kennedy: Unlike other American left-liberals like
> Lou Reed ("Most of all I wish I'd forget the day John Kennedy
> died"), Pynchon seems to be very critical on Kennedy. In addition
> to AtD's --- more or less --- subtile diss on pp. 626-7, there is
> a direct reference in the Slow Learner intro: "Modern readers will be,
> at least, put off by an unacceptable level of racist, sexist and
> proto-Fascist talk throughout this story [that is "Low-lands" - kfl].
> (...) The best I can say for it now is that, for its time, it is
> probably authentic enough. John Kennedy's role model James Bond
> was about to make his name by kicking third-world people around,
> another extension of the boy's adventure tales a lot of us grew
> up reading". Since it seems not really necessary for getting the
> message, it must have been a personal need for Pynchon to drop
> Kennedy's name in this context. And the JFK passages in GR
> (pp. 65, 682, 688) ooze with aggressive sarcasm. Any thoughts?

"One letter from Mexico in 1964 details the profound effects of the
Kennedy assassination on Pynchon's mental state...."

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/newsletters/2001/spring/pynchon2.html