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

[Mark Kohut]

Must find or reget my copy of Slouching......

And Hughes as himself is ALSO a near-perfect synechdoche for P's themes of money and power.

--- On Sun, 11/22/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: IVIV (15) 273—7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 9:33 AM
> 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
>