ATDTDA (18): 493-494 "captivated by eyes"

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Mark Kohut  [to David]:
 
          Very strong case made...maybe you are fully right...I'm 
          rereading (again) and letting it all get more internalized 
          and see anew.
 
          I agree on ideal anarchist community obs.

Got my copy of "Lines of Flight: Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire 
in the Work of Thomas Pynchon [1]" by Stefan Mattessich. This came out of 
looking for postmodern writings on Pynchon. The fact that Mattesich is 
focusing on the Countercultural frame of Pynchon's writing struck me as 
being on the right track, and now that I've got some time on my hands 
[dumped from my bookstore job, kinda a Yea!/Boo! situation, but 
probably all for the best anyway], I've got enough time to get into the swing 
of things. Also have a copy of "The Gnostic Pynchon" by Dwight Eddins. I 
find most lit/crit on postmodern fiction reads like the original German 
filtered through Google's Automatic Translator and left to die, full of un-
natural compound words that could just as easily be monosylabic and in 
use as an accepted part of common parlance [2]. What I'm getting out of 
"Lines of Flight", so far, is understanding that all these counterforces in 
Pynchon are reactive, shadowing and mirroring whatever forces they 
oppose. It's kinda like Lenny Bruce said: "without polio [3] Jonas Salk would 
be a putz." But the thing these freaks [4] are opposing the most is having 
their humanity taken away from them and replaced by some sort of 
machine. This is a rich source for Pynchon, in particular noting how the 
incursion of anti-human economic beings [corporations] infiltrates and 
colonizes the lives of "real" [5] human beings. The author is ultimately 
asking ultimately asking what it really means to be a human. How 
"Human" is Pugnax or the Thanatoids? Does the Learned English Dog 
or Vaucanson's mechanical duck have a soul? 

Love the Abby Hoffman quote from the book's introduction:

          When I appear in the Chicago courtroom ... I want to be tried not 
          because I support the National Liberation Front – which I do – but 
          because I have long hair. Not because I support the Black Liberation 
          Movement, but because I smoke dope. Not because I am against a 
          capitalist system, but because I think property eats shit. [6 Not 
          because I believe in student power, but that the schools should be 
          destroyed.] Not because I'm against corporate liberalism, but 
          because I think people should do whatever the fuck they want ... 
          Finally, I want to be tried for having a good time and not for being 
          serious.

. . . .a true Marxist [7] that boy. . . .

I ran for High School President on a platform derived from Abby Hoffman, noting 
the playful, surreal aspects of his notion of revolution, how art was to be a 
part of that revolution, and how meaningless and powerless we are to swallow 
this whole "Student Government" line of crap, ass-kissing the faculty so's we 
can develop pavlovian reactions later on in our careers. naturally [after advising 
my fellow students to despoil their ballots so as to break the vote-counting 
devices], only got 3 votes. . . .

I remember when rejoining the list last year that a lot of flames appeared 
from readers with a right-wing orientation concerning the interview for Japanese 
Playboy and the blatently hard left skew of Our Beloved Author that could be 
observed through those brushfires. There's plenty of angles where you can "view"
that Pynchon, surely a revolutionary of sorts. One eventually has to wonder 
how autobiographic these uncommon couplings really are, how much is the 
retoric of a Sexual Revolutionary. Was born to one myself, and let me tell you 
it can do a number on your head. And I know what good cooking smels like.
 
          For precison's sake, I was wrong to set "non-genital' against 
          whole body', of course.....Brown wanted to abolish the 
          distinction to some degree. yes? No "either/or' but a non-
          repressive polymorphousness?......a full "range" in an ArD
          sense (and part of your argument, yes?)
 
          And yes, Brown for non-repressive vs. Freud's 'degradation 
          of the erotic life".
 
          And, yes, we--at least I, it seems--must sort out the 
          pleasure-loving hedonism vs. decadence in TRPs vision, as 
          Ms. Kelber challenged.
 
          But, a lot of the sex in TRP IS decadent and is a metaphor for 
          what is wrong with the world we know, agreed? Laura is right 
          on Slothrop and I might argue even more of it ....ain't ideal. 
          (All---since it is so Pavlovian?)....R, Mexico is "in love" at least 
          as is(for awhile, maybe?) his otherwise bethrothed.
 
          I still neeed convincing that some of the origins of Cyprian's 
          desire--and Yashmeen's---is far from ideal. It is hard for me to 
          ground an "ideal, unique 3-way marriage" in a (largely) gay guy 
          who is turned on just by a woman's voice and her 'turning away', 
          her willful DISINTEREST....
 
          More on "the Gaze' to come....

. . . .hmmmmmmmm. . . .

Cyprian is, make no doubt about it, profoundly spiritual. Against the Day is 
profoundly spiritual. There is the notion of Karma, of having whatever you 
throw into the world come right back at ya, but with greater force because 
of the mass it accumulated up on it way back to you. There is this realization 
of love for a child without the slightest concern for who the 'father' might be. 
And this mirrors Dally's situation, her status s a magickal love childe, where 
the 'birth' father is forever gone, so that Merle becomes her 'real' father. 
Dally is an alchemical love child.

          David Morris:
          N.O. Browns acceptance (as opposed to Freud's "perversity" 
          label) of polymorphous (infantile, only because it is pre-
          repression) sexuality is not, as you label it "non-genital." But 
          it is "whole-body." And I think his point is about trying to return 
          to a pre-repression state, before the "No!" Or it is at least an 
          (hopeful) exploration about whether such a return is possible. 
          For Brown (as I see it), his dilemma with Freud was whether 
          neurosis/repression is an irredeemable condition, either poorly 
          or acceptably mediated in everyday life. I don't think Brown ever 
          comes to a definitive conclusion over the trilogy of his explor-
          ations of the subject, but the books are well worth reading.

          The 3-way marriage seems to me a idyllic presentation (just as 
          Pynchon's anarchist's village is shown as an idyllic hope), 
          producing a miracle baby (Ljubica - From the Slavic element 
          "lub" meaning "love" combined with a diminutive suffix), the 
          product of a three-way love making - significantly directed by 
          the female and provoking in all partners an expansion in their 
          realms of sexual pleasure. So I don't agree that it is presented 
          as a "falling away" as "V" portrays. It isn't "modern" either, 
          unless one considers a liberated female"modern." I think your 
          reference to the white goddess shows just the opposite.

"The White Goddess" portends feminist spirituality, traces of which can be 
observed in Geli Tripping and Vineland's Kunoichi Attentives. Everything in 
AtD must have its present day equivalent, and note how Feminist Spirituality 
grew out of older covens that grew out of the Golden Dawn. A lot of these 
future paths, alternate lives on tracks few of us ever get to travel on, have 
their real start with the modern era. Yashmeen isn't modern, she's just as 
postmodern as Moe Sizlack [8].

          Mark Kohut wrote:
          David,

          I'm going to offer/expand some difference of opinion..... 
          Venus comparison seems like a great found allusion, thanks 
          to whomever...

          But....is not N.O.Brown's concept of polymorphous perversity 
          in infantile sexuality about non-genital "sex/sensuality", pure 
          whole body natural 'delight'?....in being fully alive in all the 
          senses, so to speak?

          I might want to argue that the 3-way "marriage" in this section 
          is presented by TRP as a falling away from whatever real Love 
          is/was?.....(as "V." , who might also be Venus, the Virgin et al, 
          has greatly fallen away from the original (positive) meanings in V.?)

          Maybe, I am floundering to express, this is TRP's take on all of the 
          new sexual 'choices' that the modern world started to offer?...
          Particularly offer women, the feminine principle, the "white 
          goddesses"?....

. . . .new sexual choices. . . .  

I like to note that the "Black Mass" [as we now know it] is primarly a product 
of the court of Versailles—a bit of anti-papal sexual theater. My theory is 
that Homo Sapiens is a blend of Chimpanzees and Bonobos, and the 
"Freaks", Hippies, Swingers usw., lean more towards the Bonobo side. But
that's just one man's [historically informed] opinion. And by the way, you 
really should check out those Romans, they were on to something, 
a—a—and better still, now them Hindoos really, I mean really were on to 
something. . . .

1. [Andy Rooney voice} . . . .Ever notice how these College Level Lit/Crit
discourses always have two titles?. I mean, couldn't the author have 
whittled it all down to one title? Do you ever wonder if a College Level
education is supposed to include knowing how to edit? I mean, in the real 
world, you only have so much time to say anything and. . . .

[looks at watch]

. . . . what do you know, my time is up. . . .

[foley of watch]: tick, tick, tick, tick. . . . 

[fade out to commercial]

2. There's this whole College level of the 'Elect', a hedgerow of Humpty 
Dumpties who get to choose the meanings of 'their' words.

3. Scary Documentry that played on the Sundance channel [can't seem to find it 
anywhere else] showing how AIDS is SIDS that mutated in polio vaccine 
prepared in semian [chimp] cultures. 

4. My mom would call herself and all of her freinds "Freaks". This perfect 
countercultural "revolution of meaning"—to channel Abby Hoffman: "I don't 
want you to bust me because of section 17, line whogivesafuck of some 
arbitrary, self-declared "code of law",  I want you to bust me because I'm 
acting just like a human being, I want you to declare that it's illegal to 
be human, to get it out in the open and admit that you're inhuman, that 
you're offically, on the record anti-human. I want a war crimes tribunal for 
corporations and the corporo-fascist kleptocracy that runs this country"

5. Nothing's been all that rigorously 'real' lately. . . .

6. "Not because I believe in student power, but that the schools should be 
destroyed"was not part of the quote in "Lines of Flight", they came from 
a website:

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/dec4.html

crammed with goodies like: 

                     Information is not knowledge, 
                     Knowledge is not wisdom, 
                     Wisdom is not truth, 
                     Truth is not beauty, 
                     Beauty is not love, 
                     Love is not music
                     and Music is THE BEST.
                     Frank Zappa

7. Beppo, is my guess. And be sure to check out what I consider the highlight
of GR, in the little sorire at Stephan Utgarthaloki's digs [P 720—732, and use 
your Weisenburger decoder ring (revised 2006 edition) for translation onto your 
own co-ordinants.], and its distinctly Yippie flavor.

8. Tthere's a scene in one of the Simpsons episodes , where Moe's Tavern 
goes all upscale and flashy and eventually get kinda highbrow and surreal, 
and Moe explains the shift in the interior decoration [8] :

          Moe: Welcome to "m," hah? Heh, heh. So, what do you think 
          of the new joint? 

          Lenny: Wow, this place looks like it's from the not-too-distant 
          future. 

          Moe: Yeah. You like it, Homer? 

          Homer: [looking at live rabbits wiggling in harnesses suspended 
          from the ceiling] Um, the rabbits are cute. 

          Lenny: Eh, that one ain't moving. [points to a still rabbit] 

          Moe: [snaps, summoning an aide] Uh, change number 7. 

          Carl: I don't get all this eyeball stuff. Uh, what are they supposed 
          to represent? Uh, eyeballs?

          Moe: It's po-mo! [blank stares from all] 

          Post-modern! [more staring] 

          Yeah, all right -- weird for the sake of weird. 

          Guys: Oooh! 

And the rest of the show is waaaaaay po-moe.

http://mellowclark.blogspot.com/2005/01/moe-goes-postmodern.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_the_Moe

9 "Well, we're no longer as low-rent as people remember us here either Zoyd, 
in fact since George Lucas [10] and all his crew came and went there's been a 
real change of consciousness." Vineland, pg. 7 and I suggest you read the rest, 
love the comment by Zoyd pointing out what with all the Benzs and Beemers in 
the parking lot, how the local landscape seems to have morphed into Germany, 
insinuating [as such a comment would, coming as they do from the lips of a 
freak] how the Nazis have rolled into town. Like the Firesign Theater put it:
"The President's Name is Schicklegruber!" I'm sure Pynchon must have known 
about Maxxam, Charles Hurwitz, Judi Bari and the bomb under her front seat 
the time she came to Oakland, about the time Vineland was published [11], 
he's noting the corporatization of the forests and how that would inevitably 
lead to the death of the forests.

http://www.utwatch.org/archives/polemicist/vol2no2_redwoodsummer.html

10. Anyone else notice how last week's "Family Guy" "Star Wars" episode was 
rotoscoped from the "Fox" originals?

11. Whatever I might lack in $40 words and college degrees I make up for in 
radical digression and pastiche.