inherent vice metaphor, maybe

[grladams at teleport.com]

 I've been ruminating on this for a few days. Doesn't there seem to be a
planned obsolescence of an addict's recovery in inherent vice? Golden Fang
doing the big capitalist take as addicts are coming and going. And another
thing, regarding action on p 144, Mickey's got a fix for capitalist
schemes, "Sloane likes to call it reallocation"

And planned obsolecence is probably one of those topics that gets
pynchonheads going off! just... reminiscing about how stuff used to be
better back before some rupture cheapened things... and loving descriptions
of mechanical equipment in ATD. Picturing Gordita beach back before all the
development. ... entropy of quality restored by the paramorphoscope or..

I've long thought that Pynchon has a tiny thread of some kind of
sorrow/guilt/or some kind of old longing. He is, after all, 11th generation
American who is of Plantagenet Ancestry and whose family's estate may have
been carved deeply for hundreds of years by various capitalist takes, and
it pops out for display in how he treats the reversal of fortune. 

Our list has a John Bailey and a Michael Bailey.. just now noticed this.

Jill

Original Message:
-----------------
From: John Bailey sundayjb at gmail.com
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 13:02:52 +1000
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: inherent vice metaphor, maybe


Compare: planned obsolescence, wherein consumer products are
deliberately manufactured with inherent vices. The infamous "Sony
clock" is used to describe the way that company's products tend to
break down within six month of warranty expiry. A friend of a friend
in Japan worked for the obsolescence department in one such company,
working out how to get the timing right.

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Daniel Cape <daniel.cape at gmail.com> wrote:
> Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky talks about the related aesthetic of
> 'saba' (lit. 'rust'): “a natural rustiness, the charm of olden days,
> the stamp of time. [--or patina—A.T.] [
] In a sense the Japanese
> could be said to be trying to master time aesthetically.”
> -- Sculpting in Time, p. 59.
>
> 2009/10/3 John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
>>
>> Speaking of art, I was recently thinking about the Japanese aesthetic
>> concept of wabi-sabi which is another great way of thinking about
>> inherent vice (and I'm SURE Pynchon would have come across it).
>>
>> Hard to describe simply but it's to do with beauty's connection to
>> inherent imperfections in the object, and also its transience
>> (existence in time rather than outside of it).
>>
>> Pynchon certainly has a poet's eye when it comes to the impermanence
>> of all good things, I reckon. I think Japanese readers would really,
>> really get his work too. Have there been any translations?
>


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