IVIV1: Introducing Pynchon's burgher

[Joseph Tracy]

I like Michael's thoughts here. I think this book may seem or indeed  
be less ambitious as a scrying pool into the big enchilada, but  it  
has some fresh qualities that intrigue me. Something I sense in IV is  
a greater humanizing of all characters, both  seedy and slightly less  
seedy. Harder to find the V character.   He seems to be exploring the  
idea of the interdependence of good and evil, muscle and brain, love  
and lust , con and conned, forbidden-ness and commerce. Isn't justice  
a kind of repo man?  Doc Sportello wanted to be a cop detective when  
he was a kid;  they just criminalized the wrong shit.

Anyway, no matter what you personally like detecting, it kinda gets  
in the blood and pretty soon you are detecting some very suspicious   
shit; you apply the rules to the rule-makers and wind up with rooms  
full of puzzling evidence. Here's a little tidbit from Democracy Now.
  UK Deports Former Guantanamo Guard
The British government has deported a former Guantanamo guard who was  
scheduled to address a meeting of Cageprisoners, a human rights  
organization that tries raise awareness of the plight of the  
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The former guard, Terry Holdbrooks, has  
become an outspoken critic of the US government over the treatment of  
prisoners at Guantánamo. Holdbrooks was denied entry into Britain  
after landing at Heathrow airport on Saturday. Holdbrooks told the  
Observer newspaper of London that he had also been detained and  
questioned by US airport officials on Thursday, as he attempted to  
complete the first stage of his journey.

Calling all junior and senior members of the private eyes... time to  
get out the secret decoder rings. I think I'm picking up messages  
from Lemuria.



On Aug 31, 2009, at 2:19 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Why is a repo person automatically heinous?
>
> People buy things on credit, but fail to pay --
> "what's a mother to do?"
>
> He carries the bag but never uses it.  That's laudable.
>
> He has a specific mission - to get the goods (as the IWW saying
> goes, "direct action gets the goods") and - unless all of contract law
> is to be thrown out as inadmissible impositions of The Man -
> he is performing a real service.
>
> ...yeah, yeah, buy-on-credit places
> jack up the price, and easily available credit leads people to live
> beyond their means, so forth, but these are systemic ills and have
> much more to do with inherent flaws in capitalism, or, to avoid  
> that jargon,
> with areas where the human ability to interact gracefully is
> still developing (sort of like, hey, where was language or algebra
> a few thousand years ago - they didn't even have a word for
> antidisestablishmentarianism in Egypt, nor did Greek math have a zero,
> so I suspect there's some unknown right now that will make a huge
> difference in the spreading of wealth sometime, when it takes hold
> ("the reds are talking hold" - Hunter S Thompson)) so forth, than with
> the legitimacy of private collection efforts in any individual case...
>
> but we've established his efforts were non-violent, right?
>
> His private-enterprise role pretty much prevents him being corrupt
> to any great extent: collude with one deadbeat and his job is  
> pretty much
> toast.  He has to get the car, or whatever, back.
>
> OK, he can occasionally let one of his skip-tracees slip, in theory,
> but again, private enterprise reduces the worth of that service since
> the seekers can just send somebody else.  And it won't look good
> on his quarterly review.
>
> Now, having defended the noble repo person / skip tracer,
> (pretty much sincerely)...
>
> One of the things I think is going on in IV as well as most
> noir fiction is sorting out the PI's stance on the cops.
>
> I'd call the PI - cop relationship a fairly good approximation
> of the dilemma of citizen v state writ small, which I bet somebody  
> cleverer
> and better-read has already noticed...but it's sorta new to me...
>
> Nobody's perfect - as somebody in Doc's profession certainly notices.
>
> Cops have such a broad mandate, a fuzzy agenda, that it's much
> easier for them to cover up malfeasance and stay employed.
>
> Cops have more power, are expected to stay busy all the time,
> they are supposed to enforce a rule of law, while it's human nature
> to be loyal to buddies, bosses (to some extent), to favor people
> who are like unto oneself....
>
> I could go on and on, but although I think I was onto something 3  
> paragraphs
> back, I'm pretty sure I'm spinning my wheels now!  Where did I go  
> wrong?
>
> I did want to defend the humble repo person - check
> I did want to say I relish an interplay of forces between cop and  
> pi - check
>
> I wanted to say nice things about cops (to some extent)
> - if a cop isn't bent or brutal, he or she is certainly a valuable
> part of society!
>
> Fnord
>
>
> -- 
> "Furthermore, in the postmodern usage of Menippean satire it is
> considered appropriate to abbreviate concepts, but not to omit
> articles." - Keith