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

[Paul Mackin]

On Nov 23, 2007 8:23 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>
>  Flashback to the early 1980s ... Northern Germany, teenagers telling jokes:
>  What did President Reagan say when he recently visited Hamburg?
>  "Ich bin ein Hamburger!"

This would be a reworking of an earlier joke--about the troubles
President Jimmy Carter had  in   communicating with Europeon
audiences. Story goes he was advised tongue in cheek by a staff member
 to visit Frankfort and announce "Ich bin ein Frankfurter.


>
>  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?
>
>  Kai

The Pyncher  in this case was being nice.

Jack's role model wasn't any character from fiction; it was a real
life father, the exceedingly rapacious Joe Kennedy.

I can't imagine P's not liking, admiring JFK a little bit, despite the
latter's scoundrelism.

Pynchon isn't an author  who promotes  heroes or boy scout behavior. I
don't think he promotes anyone. Just writes about them.

Isn't America's,  and maybe the world's, lingering (if half hearted)
fondness for JFK, even after all the negative revelations, owed to his
so evident and still remembered contrast with chief rival Dick Nixon?
Grace versus heavy-handedness.

Pynchon has a lot of grace too. Never heavy-handed.

P.