VL--IV, More, p. 72 ff Hollywoodization of America?

[John Bailey]

Check out Anna Funder's Stasiland (if you haven't already) - beautiful
"documentary novel" about the civilians in the employ of the Secret
Police in the former East Germany. I think about one in every 200
people were hired or coerced into spying on their friends and
neighbours and Funder uncovers the morass of secret codes, hidden
communications and plain weird stuff (keeping "smell samples" of
suspicious individuals) that were part of many people's daily life.
Plus there was the fact that nobody knew who was in and who was out,
making for that perfect climate of complete paranoia.

She tracks down lots of former Stasi operatives who have and haven't
come to terms with their role, though, which makes it a nice
psychological correspont to VL.

It's a quick and easy read, too.

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:45 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Something I've wondered about on occasion.  Doesn't government surveillance have some sort of mathematical limit?  For every spy camera and listening post set up there has to be at least one person monitoring the received info.  If we were all under surveillance all the time, wouldn't we all have to be employed in watching each other?  Obviously, it's not done this way.  Governments use the threat that you MIGHT be under surveillance to get people to behave.  But if we know that we can't all be watched, then where's the threat?  Or if we all were actually being watched, we wouldn't all arrest all of us...  Fuck, it's mid-day and I haven't had my caffeine yet.
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> Laura
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> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>Sent: Jan 9, 2009 11:14 AM
>>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: VL--IV, More, p. 72 ff Hollywoodization of America?
>>
>>p.73 Flash had been Outlaw, now, no second chances to be 'part of the structure of governance'.
>>
>>       "nobody else around"--i.e "In the Midnight Hour"
>>
>>p.73 Frenesi lived all of her formative years aware of a list of fake names....she hated and feared it....She enacted what she hated and feared . Once this societal 'betrayal' had entered the society, then some were doomed to enact it? Honesty was lost in the culture. ?
>>
>> This personal betrayal is linked to TRPs themes of spying, surveillance, gov't lies?
>>
>>TRP points to the McCarthy 50s, but he goes further--- to the origins of Hollywood? That fabricating 'dream factory".....links up with AtD sections here, it seems. By Vineland America, all of the fake "reality" is permeated by the movie/TV falseness.....??
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