Environmental Nightmares

[Robert Mahnke]

Apropos of this, back when I initially read IV it seemed to me that
one of its antecedents was the movie Chinatown, which, if I recall
correctly, has a plot that turns on someone's plans for water rights
and real-estate development.  (It is probably too tangential even for
this list for me to point out that the movie Volcano (1997) is
superficially concerned with molten lava appearing under downtown LA
but is really about the city's unresolved issues with water, but I
digress.)  I am not the expert on SoCal noir that this board needs
and/or has, depending on your stance in the recent flame war, so let
me ask you all: IV and Chinatown -- are there significant resonances
there?

And if someone already raised this, apologies in advance.

On 11/30/09, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having just returned from Thanksgiving holiday in Las Vegas (not my
> idea - the two kids decided that their families and my wife & I should
> converge there this year), I was reminded of Sportello's venture
> there.  And I remembered the real estate thread of that trip, the "old
> strip" about to be redeveloped into a brand new casino (am I
> remembering correctly?).  Then I thought about how Mickey's
> residential development that is the scene of the initial murder is
> called an "environmental disaster" or something to that effect.  Why
> is it that Pynchon seems to ignore the environmental disaster that is
> Las Vegas?  And similarly, wouldn't Mickey's "putting up a whole city
> from scratch someday, out in the desert" for people to live in for
> free also have been an environmental disaster in terms of water
> supply?  And later, when Doc is discussing Mickey's development with
> that "old money" guy (I forget his name), it seems Mickey's
> development is an environmental disaster only because it brings the
> riff-raff out into the domain of the more aesthetically-minded
> old-money crowd.
>
> It just seems that real estate, development, and the environment have
> a large place in IV, but I just  don't see how the integrate into a
> coherent picture...
>
> David Morris
>