VL-IV (15) Re: Inherent Vice page 345

[Bekah]

Yup,  that's one of the parts I really noticed when I read through  
it.    Good stuff there.

Bekah


On Mar 4, 2009, at 11:41 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> Yes, I'm getting ahead of myself, but it's  Bekah's fault, for it's  
> her posting of Márk Kaposvári's "Vineland's America" that got those  
> synapses snappin' . . .
>
> 	The whole novel is represented as a movie with one line of plot
> 	that is merely twisted chronologically, and never in the
> 	postmodernist manner, as Brian McHale articulates in his
> 	famous book, Postmodernist Fiction, ontologically. There is no
> 	collision of discourses and worlds in the novel but only one
> 	world with one discourse is what is presented. We are given a
> 	picture about the picture, that is, the author does not strives to
> 	give back (the chaotic, contingent and many times inscrutable)
> 	reality (as he tried earlier in Gravity’s Rainbow, or the Crying of
> 	Lot 49), but only to give back how American authorities stage
> 	reality. So the stylistic twist here, as it is already mentioned, is
> 	that Pynchon writes in terms of master-narratives in order to
> 	deconstruct their credulity.
> 	http://primus.arts.u-szeged.hu/american/americana/volIIno1/ 
> kaposvari.htm
>
>
> On Mar 4, 2009, at 7:06 AM, rich wrote:
>
>> Looking over Manson's rap sheet the man is a strikingly example or
>> afflcted with some aspect of  inherent vice, no?
>
> And very nearly a member of Pynchon's favorite band:
>
> 	From the mailbox:	
>
> 	"Did Charles Manson really write a song for the Beach Boys?"
>
> 	Answer: It wasn't written for the Beach Boys, but "Never Learn
> 	 Not To Love" (on the Beach Boys' 20/20 album) was indeed
> 	written by Charles Manson, and for a brief time in 1968, about a
> 	year before the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson and Beach
> 	Boys drummer Dennis Wilson were acquaintances.
>
> http://www.lostinthegrooves.com/short-bits-2-charles-manson-and-the- 
> beach-boys
>
> I suppose that maybe Dennis & Charles weren't all that close—how  
> close could anyone get to Charles Manson, anyway?—But close enough  
> for Dennis to get frightened ex-post facto. Then again, there seems  
> to be some weird Thomas Pynchon/Brian Wilson stuff going on already:
>
> 	When Siegel brought his friend Thomas Pynchon up to the
> 	house one night, the famous hipster novelist sat in stunned,
> 	unhappy silence while the nervous, stoned pop star — who had
> 	dragged him into his then-new Arabian tent to get high — kept
> 	kicking over the oil lamp he was trying to light. "Brian was kind
> 	of afraid of Pynchon, because he'd heard he was an Eastern
> 	intellectual establishment genius," Siegel recalls. "And Pynchon
> 	wasn't very articulate. He was gonna sit there and let you talk
> 	while he listened. So neither of them really said a word all night
> 	long. It was one of the strangest scenes I'd ever seen in my life."
> 	Peter Ames Carlin: Brian Wilson, Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall
> 	and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson (p.103-104).
>
> http://www.hyperarts.com/thomas-pynchon/gravitys-rainbow/extra/ 
> siegel.html
>
> I recall from somewhere [probably Seigel, perhaps Weisenburger]  
> that sometime in the mid-sixties, Pynchon said he preferred the  
> Beach Boys over the Beatles. Not that there's anything wrong with  
> that. The Beatles/Beach Boys dialog is very reminiscent of of the  
> Beethoven/Rossini dialog in Gravity's Rainbow.
>
> On Mar 4, 2009, at 9:39 AM, rich wrote:
>
>> back to watching Adam-12
>
> Right on target for Vineland.
>
> That collusion between the prison/police industry and entertainment/ 
> propaganda [early "infotainment"] like "Dragnet"—and Dragnet's  
> offspring—are pointed to directly in Vineland.
>
> My Name's Friday, it was the day watch:
>
> 	 . . .The same month, Webb learned that he'd been praised
> 	before the House of Representatives by California
> 	Congressman (and future Mayor of Los Angeles) Sam Yorty, for
> 	his policy of distributing 16mm copies of Dragnet episodes free
> 	of charge to various public service organizations. Shows like
> 	"The Big Cop" were being used not only by city and state police
> 	departments across the country. The National Safety Council's
> 	distribution of "The Big Layout" was specifically cited. 	
> 	"Thousands of school principles have made it mandatory that
> 	students view [the episode] at least once," declared Yorty,
> 	whose speech concluded, "Mr Webb has done more than repay
> 	 his public for his loyalties. . . .He has done more than help
> 	abate crime and disaster and expose dishonesty. He deserves
> 	a great deal of credit for his splendid contribution to good
> 	citizenship."
>
> http://tinyurl.com/cad5z8
>
> "Just The Facts, Ma'am"
>
> 	The following pictures are from the personal collection of Raul
> 	Moreno,a long-time collector and friend of the Webb family. He
> 	has been a contributor to both "Just The Facts, Ma'am" by Dan
> 	Moyer and "My Name's Friday" by Michael Hayde. As a child,
> 	he worked as an extra on all of the Mark VII productions and
> 	saw Webb work on a first-hand basis. He is an LAPD historian
> 	working on movies like "LA Confidential" as a consultant and
> 	has been interviewed for the A&E series "City Confidential"
> 	episode on the unsolved William Desmond Taylor case.
> 	Anytime there is a project about Jack Webb, he gets the call.
>
> http://www.badge714.com/dragraul.htm
>
> 	"All at once you lost your first name. You're a cop, a flatfoot, a
> 	bull, a dick, John Law. You're the fuzz, the heat; you're poison,
> 	you're trouble, you're bad news. They call you everything, but
> 	never a policeman.
>
> http://www.badge714.com/dragquot.htm
>
>
> 	What sets the novel in a telling direction, or, in other words,
> 	erupts an immediate onrush of associations, is a direct
> 	reference to George Orwell’s 1984 at the beginning of the
> 	novel, for this is the year in which the enframing plot is set.
> 	There are many analogies between Orwell’s dystopic and
> 	Pynchon’s realistic world, and even if these analogies are
> 	exaggerated somewhat, still there is connection between them
> 	that points to an America that is absolutely inconsistent with its
> 	own notions of (ultimate) freedom. Like in 1984, where people
> 	are constantly under surveillance and observed through the so-
> 	called ‘telescreens’, in Vineland, besides such direct allusions
> 	as: “as if the Tube were suddenly to stop showing pictures and
> 	instead announce, ‘From now on, I’m watching you’” (Pynchon
> 	1991, 340), and “I knew someday this act would get bigger than
> 	me” (op. cit. 8) when the protagonist refers to his yearly
> 	‘televisual insanity act’ (the procession of which, including the
> 	place, time and manner of that, is dictated by the media instead
> 	of him); Pynchon indirectly represents a culture that is saturated
> 	to the bone with televisual culture. This culture is shown to be
> 	heavily domesticated and “Tubed out”, believing and living, or
> 	to put it this way, ‘be-lie-ving’ in a simplified film-like world,  
> with
> 	the sham discourse of personal liberty constantly instilled into
> 	the devout lambs of America following its uniformed shepherds.
>
> 	http://primus.arts.u-szeged.hu/american/americana/volIIno1/ 
> kaposvari.htm
>
> The Blue Boy:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0zgIzqgxFU
>
> The story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been  
> changed to protect the innocent.
>
> 	Dragnet began with the narration "The story you are about to
> 	see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the
> 	innocent." At the end of each show, the results of the trial of the
> 	suspect and severity of sentence were announced by Hal
> 	Gibney. Webb frequently re-created entire floors of buildings on
> 	soundstages, such as the police headquarters at Los Angeles
> 	City Hall for Dragnet and a floor of the Los Angeles Herald-
> 	Examiner Building for the 1954 film.
>
> 	In early 1967, Webb produced and starred in a new color
> 	version of Dragnet for NBC. This version co-starred Harry
> 	Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon. (Ben Alexander was
> 	unavailable, as he was co-starring in Felony Squad on ABC.)
> 	The show's pilot, originally produced as a made-for-TV movie in
> 	1966, did not air until 1969. The series itself ran through 1970.
> 	To distinguish it from the original series, the year of production
> 	was added to the title (Dragnet 1967, Dragnet 1968, etc.). The
> 	revival also emphasized crime prevention and outreach to the
> 	public. Its attempts to address the contemporary youth-drug
> 	culture (such as the Blue Boy episode voted 85th-best TV
> 	episode of all time by TV Guide and TV Land) have led certain
> 	episodes on the topic to achieve cult status due to their strained
> 	attempts to be "with-it", such as Friday grilling Blue Boy by
> 	asking him "You're pretty high and far out. What kind of kick are
> 	you on, son?".
>
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Webb
>
> 		THE TUBE
>
> 	Oh … the … Tube!
> 	It’s poi-soning your brain!
> 	Oh, yes….
> 	It’s dri-ving you, insane!
> 	It’s shoot-ing rays, at you,
> 	Over ev’ry-thing ya do,
> 	It sees you in your bedroom,
> 	And – on th’ toi-let too!
> 	Tube….
> 	It knows, your ev’ry thought,
> 	Hey, Boob, you thought you would-
> 	T’n get caught –
> 	While you were sitting there, starin’ at “The
> 	Brady Bunch,”
> 	Big fat computer jus’
> 	Had you for lunch, now Th’
> 	Tube –
> 	It’s plugged right in, to you!
> 	Vineland, pages 336-37
>
> Yet another aria from Hector Zuinga, turned duet with Frenesi's bel  
> canto bouncing off the top of Zuinga's notes.
>
> 	"You're an honest soldier, Frenesi, and we been out on so
> 	many of the same type calls over the years .... " Here came
> 	some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan - cop solidarity, his
> 	problems with racism in the Agency, her 59¢ on the male dollar,
> 	maybe a little "Hill Street Blues" thrown in, plus who knew what
> 	other licks from all that Tube, though she thought she
> 	recognized Raymond Burr's "Robert Ironside" character and a
> 	little of "The Captain" from "Mod Squad." It was disheartening to
> 	see how much he depended on these Tubal fantasies about his
> 	profession, relentlessly pushing their propaganda message of
> 	cops-are-onlyhuman-got-to-do-their-job, turning agents of
> 	government repression into sympathetic heroes. Nobody
> 	thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than the routine
> 	violations of constitutional rights these characters performed
> 	week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular of American
> 	expectations. Cop shows were in a genre right-wing weekly TV
> 	Guide called Crime Drama, and numbered among their zealous
> 	fans working cops like Hector who should have known better.
> 	And now he was asking her to direct, maybe write, basically yet
> 	another one? Her life "underground," with a heavy antidrug
> 	spiel. Wonderful.
> 	Vineland, page 345
>
> ====================================================
>
> 	Beginning in 1968, in concert with Robert A. Cinader, Webb
> 	produced NBC's popular Adam-12, which focused on
> 	uniformed LAPD officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim
> 	Reed (Kent McCord), which ran until 1975.
>
> 	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Webb