inherent vice metaphor, maybe

[John Bailey]

And if we're talking planned obsolecence, let's not forget the sorry
tale of Byron the Bulb.

Maybe it's impossible to infer Pynchon's own politics and beliefs etc
from his novels alone, but you sure can spot the themes he's
interested in, all the way back to those early stories.

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:35 PM, grladams at teleport.com
<grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
>  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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