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[Joseph Tracy]

On Dec 15, 2009, at 11:19 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> On Dec 15, 2009, at 7:07 PM, Richard Fiero wrote:
>
>> This is not James Joyce and is not a puzzle for academics to  
>> unwind for 300 years. If something like Howard Hughes is a bit  
>> subliminal in the text, it probably should stay there
>
> Pynchon is by the closest to an American James Joyce we have  
> witnessed so far and Howard Hughes is not subliminal in the text— 
> His presence is in fact a repeated leitmotiv in Inherent Vice and   
> he was THE central figure in Watergate. This will be unwound by  
> critics who are awake in the future.
In terms of alternate history , which seems to me to always be the  
driving force of Pynchon's work, I find Hughes to be key and if  
anyone wants to read the vigilant California post, which also points  
to points to Watergate, It's worth reading. I have come to the same  
key historic questions( the RFK assassination, the shift to fiat  
money, the role of the Mob,  Howard Hughes,  Cuba, Reagan, CIA drug  
trafficking, Southern California and Richard Nixon  as a nexus of   
anti-democratic criminality) and the same  key figures as Robin by a  
different route. The pointers leading in this direction are all  
through the text. The motives,( the various forms of prostitution,   
the appeal of pornographies of sex and violence)and the distractions  
that enable this criminality are another major theme.



>
> Feel free to go back to sleep.