The Fall of the House of Labor AtD.93 Republicans?

[alice wellintown]

> On Aug 9, 2009, at 5:50 AM, Carvill John wrote:
>
>> I don't blame you! But the fact that Bush was widely regarded as ape-like
>> really made the fact that that Governor section was about him even more
>> crashingly obvious.
>
> Knowing about Alberto Gonzales' role in Gov. Bush's Texas seals the deal.


So is it just another set piece in theis huge novel full of set
pieces? Pynchon has the bad guys beat and murder Webb, sling his body
up on a tower of silence in Utah so he can call the Bush
Administration a bunch of murdering thugs? Is that it?  Way to go Tom!
Webb, so the bad boys tell us, will be harder to find in Utah. Why is
that? Sounds like an excuse to move the plot to Utah. He is found
rather quickly. In fact, the narrator slips in that little bit about
Webb still being not quite dead until his body is in Hell-town. His
son grabs the old man, gets out of town. Frightening, but not harder
to find Webb. So, it seems Pynchon wants a very red setting so he
takes his camera out to Utah. Out to what he calls Jeshimon, a
biblical name connoting Waste, Wilderness, Dolitude, Red Devil Death,
and the Wilderness Waste where several figures struggle with God, Men,
and Satan. Of course it is where Jesus is led by Satan in the famous
temptation in the desert story and it is where Moses and his brother
Aaron struggle to keep the flock focused on the Promised Land; where
they use their Rod to bring forth water; where they are both told that
they shall not see the Promised Land; Aaron is stripped of his
garments before God and Moses is buried by God himself after he
finally dies out in the Jeshimon.  There is a Moab in this area of
Utah, strange name to give a town, but there it is. Pyncon wants
Jeshimon. It has the same meaning in the Book of Morman and the Koran.
There are "Towers of Silence" in Utah too. So another reason to shift
the set. He likes these deliberate ambiguities. The towers are known
in Persia, India, other places, where they serve, or did, it seems
they are no longer in use, as burial towers. But the ones in Utah are
quite mysterious and beautiful.

http://static2.panoramio.com/photos/original/5965568.jpg

Look like the towers on a YES record album cover (Roger Dean).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Dean_(artist)

But Pynchon's towers are red adobe brick, makeshift structures erected
after the telegraph poles are all strung fro miles with corpses.
Eco-tourists or readers or eco-tourism magazines will recognize the
resemblances to the Iranian and Indian sacred towers of the followers
of the religious message of the Prophet Zarathustra, the Zoroastrians;
members of one of the world's smallest religions, numbering
approximately 100,000 individuals worldwide and has been declining in
numbers. There are memebers of the faith in NYC and, I assume other
parts of the Nation State. see article in ny times on decline and
diaspora, if you want.

To get this bit in about the double towers, Pynchon strings corpses up
on all the telegraph poles, kinda Heart of Darkness like, and of
course there ain't no trees in the desert. As Ida B. Wells reported
trees were not the favored structure, telegraph poles were in common
use, so were bridges, billboards. Lot of folks got lynched around this
bloody period, in fact it was the decade when the greatest number of
people were lynched. Most were blacks, of course and most were lynched
in the South. Not a lot of lynching in Utah though. Maybe the lowest
of any state in the union. Of course, in Utah, the victim got to
choose the manner of execution and neck-tie parties were none to
popular with the boys to be strung up. Intersting history of Utah
capital pumishment and Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee
omited here. Most of the men involved in the labor struggle in Utah at
this time were Italians and even needed Italian representatives at
negotiations with the State and the Business Owners.

And Pynchon wants some of the victims hung in the Hanged Man position,
that is,  hung by a single leg, birds pecking not at their Promethian
Livers, but at their dead corpses.

Into this Spaghetti Western he introduces no High Plains Drifter
(1973), but, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969)
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3IvW_nt5Js

The Rev shows folks around temptation town and explains the rules the
anrachy since there ain't no rules. And if  the Gov sees you sin, he
can execute you. He can also make you think you are not going to be
executed soon and then execute you in a day of two. Thius is the
clemency provision and all the churches in town can't do nothing about
it.

Bush as monkey grin born again devil.

Ha HA  A great set piece. Didn't like it? Well, there are 3500 more in the book.