end ch 9 begin 10

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Vato and Blood seem like parodies/homages/steals of/to/from Repo Man (1984) and the various Cheech and Chong vehicles.  Much of Chap. 9 seems taken up with various parodies or send-ups of damsel-in-distress flicks, Godzilla, etc.  Since this type of cheeze parodies itself by definition, TRP clearly has more in mind. Throughout, he's telling us that this pop/pulp culture serves to anesthetize us.  But rather than telling us to avoid this often enjoyable crap, he's telling us to dig deeper within to find its hidden subtext and exert some sort of karmic adjustment, whereby this stuff can enlighten us, rather than render us immobile.  Something like that.  The Thanatoids are like ghost images (subtext) on a TV screen, crying out to be brought into focus.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>Sent: Feb 11, 2009 3:34 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: end ch 9 begin 10
>
>  Ch 9 ends with a chip and dale song and dance featuring towaway  
>teammates Vato and Blood, and the Desi and Lucy show of DL and  
>Takeshi . Was hoping someone had thoughts on Vato and Blood. Both  
>them and Takeshi and DL function as intermediaries between land of  
>dead and land of 1984 America or Vineland the Good. Both pairs are  
>like bickering married couples, who like and need each other.   
>Another area of common ground is betrayal. Vato and Blood in Vietnam,  
>Takeshi by business partner, by Vond and to some degree by  DL, and  
>DL by Frenesi,  Wayvone,  by her own pursuit of revenge.
>
>There are quite a few Vietnamese in Humboldt   and there is a kind of  
>sense of accounting  in relationships with them that Thi Anh Tran  
>embodies. ( tie on train?, TNT, tie on tran(smission?) Anyway the  
>whole end of the chapter seems to be about wandering around in a  
>place between life and death and P has already mentioned the Bardo  
>Thodol.
>
>The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State is  
>recited by Tibetan Buddhist lamas over a dying or recently deceased  
>person, or sometimes over an effigy of the deceased. The name means  
>literally "liberation through hearing in the intermediate state".
>
>The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State  
>differentiates the intermediate state between lives into three bardos:
>
>The chikhai bardo or "bardo of the moment of death", which features  
>the experience of the "clear light of reality", or at least the  
>nearest approximation of which one is spiritually capable.
>The chonyid bardo or "bardo of the experiencing of reality", which  
>features the experience of visions of various Buddha forms (or,  
>again, the nearest approximations of which one is capable).
>The sidpa bardo or "bardo of rebirth", which features karmically  
>impelled hallucinations which eventually result in rebirth.  
>(Typically imagery of men and women passionately entwined.)
>The Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State also  
>mentions three other bardos: those of "life" (or ordinary waking  
>consciousness), of "dhyana" (meditation), and of "dream" (the dream  
>state during normal sleep).
>
>Together these "six bardos" form a classification of states of  
>consciousness into six broad types. Any state of consciousness can  
>form a type of "intermediate state", intermediate between other  
>states of consciousness. Indeed, one can consider any momentary state  
>of consciousness a bardo, since it lies between our past and future  
>existences; it provides us with the opportunity to experience  
>reality, which is always present but obscured by the projections and  
>confusions that are due to our previous unskillful actions.
>
>Ch 10 takes us to Karmic adjustment central and to meet old members  
>of 24fps in their current lives and to see some old movies. its  
>closer to "reality", as much as reality can be documented. We are  
>headed for the showdown by the surf.  What happened in the 60s?
>
>
>
>