RE Bush or Hatch & CATCH, CATCH, CATCH, CATCH 22

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown wrote:

> DIve deeper.
>


I think you are vigorously trying to remind us that these might not
be his only points.  Also, that substantive criticism - or even perceptive
reading - doesn't stop at allowing all possible meanings.

Interiorly such a reader would say something like, okay, 5 possible
references here - Biblical, Zoroastrian, Utah-history, labor history,
current political satire.  Assign them weights.  Line them up with other
references.  File them in memory so they can be tweaked by later passages
in the same work (and other works by same and other authors).  Make mental
notes of anything that can be researched without undue disruption to one's
round of dutifully appointed mindless pleasures...
and of anything that might be comment-worthy.

Digging deeper, then:

a) why bring in Zoroastrian burial rituals?   why should the author of this
narrative make such allusions in this particular place?
Just to flesh it out?  No, that would leave him open to criticisms like
" - another damned fat book!  Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr Pynchon?"

i) Utah was admitted to the Union in 1890.  Mormonism and Zoroastrianism
share an exotic status.  Utah was only admitted after the LDS agreed to
stop polygamizing.  I am not sure what the Zoroastrian position is on polygamy.
Me, I'm agin it, it seems like a bummer for everybody and a way to lock in
inequitable social relations...not to mention you get these huge parasitic
royal families

ii) If Deuce and Sloat choose to complete Webb's assassination in Jeshimon,
what does this tell us about Colorado?  That it might have a justice system
where this might not play.  This in turn undercuts Webb's loss of faith in said
Colorado justice system - which in turn devalues his justification for
his, c'mon,
murderous and counterproductive ways.  (Yes, I keep harping on this,
but for me this
is at least as strong an impression in this passage as satire on Bush.)

iii) by picking up the body, Reef interrupts the Zoroastrian burial sequence,
and the fact that he thinks that doing this is important, is
interesting.  Without absorbing
his father's rabid unionism or giving any sign - in the whole book -
of understanding
anything at all about participatory democracy or any larger social
unit than the family,
he is driven to continue what he perceives as his father's work...
starting with burying the old guy.
You would think, as a non-traditional sort of fella, this in itself wouldn't
matter so much to him
- and maybe it doesn't, really, but his impulsive act of passion leads
to a long sequence of events, starting with the trip back with the body
(which is frickin' moving, visualized on its own terms, c'mon, isn't it?)

---but anyway, is there a point about how he interrupts a coincidental
observance of Zoroastrian tradition that was started in motion unknowingly
in a lawless territory
in favor of a different (not just Judeo-Christian-
Mohammedan, but those are the ones I think of first) burial tradition
that he doesn't really care about in the abstract very much but feels
important to testify to his love for his father whom he didn't understand
in life nor in whose ways he had set out to live...


I can feel myself losing control of my train of thought.

I did have a point:
Literature is news that stays news.
If Pynchon wanted AtD to last, he wouldn't have confined himself
to satirizing Bush.  That far, I'm with Alice in spades.
Though, she's a lit teacher, so she will probably shine a light
on my ignorance.  That's ok.

If OBA didn't want to satirize Bush or shine a light on current Repub
hypocrisy, he wouldn't have used the language he does - and in
that impression I join the Robin & John club, although I probably will
not join in flaming alice, simply because I much prefer to maunder on
peaceably, and also my own ox hasn't been gored.  Now if she
were to say that Zoyd and Hector's lunch was NOT somewhat reminiscent
of "My Dinner with Andre", I'd feel personally challenged.


-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass