Poor Sad Mexico

[kelber at mindspring.com]

The swine flu is turning into an indictment of Mexico, when it should be a cautionary tale of agribusiness and its excesses.  Mexico's a lot more than drug cartels and unwashed hands or, as too many gringos see it, a source of hordes of unwanted immigrants.  It's a fascinating, diverse, seductive country.  In addition to loving pigs, Pynchon loved Mexico.  Will this epidemic lead to the average 36,000 human-strain flu deaths the US sees each year but considers too mundane to inspire tabloid headings?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>Swine flu related to our farming/stockyard conditions----
>so one of Pynchon's favorite animals is brutally raised
>to get brutally sick with a new virus that connects us to
>them and kills us both/all. 
>
>
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 12:45:58 PM
>Subject: Re: Poor Sad Mexico
>
>The longest section is the "About the Murders" chapter.  The state of
>the corpses of the murder victims found are described, but the act of
>murder is not described.  And these corpse descriptions are
>interspersed with other stories, like the experiences of some of the
>detectives investigating the murders, and other related stories.  I
>didn't find it gruesome.  The effect is to make the reader adapt the
>role of a detective.  In some ways this book is one massive and
>complicated detective novel.
>
>David Morris
>
>On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 10:46 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> How does 2666 compare with The Savage Detectives?  I could only make it halfway through that book - it got tedious after a while.  I get the sense that the murder descriptions are the high point of 2666, but I'm not sure I could handle reading them.
>
>
>