Re: IVIV (15) 273—7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 22, 2009, at 5:48 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> one has to believe that the phrase "inherent virtue" in
> Didion entered TRPs creativity and emerged sea-changed.
>
> Amazing connections, Robin. Keep it up for the rest of us
> who aren't finding them!

One of my fantasies is of a bright orange covered "Thomas Pynchon for  
the Complete Idiot"—a guide that explicates and rationalizes the  
thorny labyrinths of Gravity's Rainbow. Looks like TRP beat me to the  
punch.

I look at the oft-times deliberately stupid Inherent Vice as that  
book. It's not that "The Golden Fang" isn't a metaphor of many parts,  
many different things to different people, like Trystero. But the idea  
of something bigger than the CIA, more paranoid than "the Mob", more  
powerful than Nixon and his crew of thugs—the "real mob, not that  
handjob mob"—really describes Howard Hughes' empire as of the spring  
of 1970, and "Golden Fang" seems like a very good description of the  
drill-bit that made the Hughes' empire so incredibly profitable. There  
are plenty of pointers and arrows in Inherent Vice that lead us to  
Hughes and his mob. If you haven't already read all of Didion's "7000  
Romaine, Los Angeles 38" there's a link below—it's only four  
beautifully written pages. I need to get my mitts on "Slouching  
Towards Bethlehem" for "the rest of the story" but have already  
absorbed most of "The White Album." There's a lot of paranoia around  
Manson that's accurately and eerily captured in Didion's essays—enough  
so that it feels like background reading for Inherent Vice. Of course,  
living in Manhattan Beach in 1970, rubbing shoulders with surfers and  
stoners, CIA agents and TRW employees would be even deeper background  
for IV and GR.

> --- On Sat, 11/21/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>  
> wrote:
>
>> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>> Subject: IVIV (15) 273—7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 10:41 AM
>> As I said before, Doc and Bigfoot are
>> heading in the general
>> direction     of 7000 Romaine in
>> this scene. " . . .

	Seven Thousand Romaine Street is in that part of Los Angeles
	familiar to admirers of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell
	Hammett: the underside of Hollywood, south of Sunset
	Boulevard, a middle-class slum of "model studios" and
	warehouses and two-family bungalows. . . .

>> . . . Here's the entire piece:
>>
>> http://jonobr1.com/argentina/summer_school/reading_ted.pdf