IVIV (10) page 157

[Joseph Tracy]

On Oct 16, 2009, at 10:00 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

>> First you say jason is a tv character in a tv show about tv then  
>> you mock
>> him like he was real, laughably foolish in his naive stupidity.  
>> But if
>> Pynchon is purely mocking him and showing how believing tv turns  
>> you into a
>> Steppin Fetchit fool, where does the Rolls fit in? Too flashy or  
>> not, "They"
>> don't give those away. Why would Pynchon give him one? Maybe this is
>> Pynchon's take on Obama.
>
> It has nothing to do with P's take on Obama.
Maybe tenuous, but I find a certain comic symmetry.
> I guess one could make the usual argument that you try to make, the
> deprecation of fiction like P's is justified because it is not serious
> enough to sit on the same shelf with intellectual and moral fictions,
> but the history of the American novel and, more important to our
> discussion, the American Romance, where the greatest tragic (grave and
> serious) and religious (moral and ethical) issues are examined, works
> such as Moby-Dick, Typee, White Jacket, House of the Seven Gables,
> Scarlet Letter, Beloved, Invisible Man, Cuckoo's Next, and so on and
> on . . . and the critical industry that has developed around these
> works, debunk this worn out and rather stodgy old Jamesian critique of
> the American Masters of Satire and Romance from Irving to Pynchon.
> "It is not necessarily true that in so far as a novel departs from
> realism it is obscurantist and disqualified to make moral comments on
> the world" (Chase xi).

Didn't say a thing about obscurantism and I thing you are flying solo  
on the Hester Prynne connection. Anyway, my  comparison would  
certainly constitute a moral comment on the world.
>
>  Able to earn his own Rolls but not able to manage his "team of
> rivals". You are all ready to defend dream boy Obama. No way he
>> could be pimpin for the demigod. But you get all worked up about   
>> Doc's
>> parents and anything that smells of Suburbia or TV. These are  
>> after all
>> characters in a novel and not someone who sends drones and  
>> soldiers to kIll
>> an Al Quaeda  long since moved out of town. I hear this was a  
>> great year for
>> recruiting young people to "serve their country", what with the  
>> lack of jobs
>> and all.  That and a peace prize should buy a lot of dead bodies.  
>> I also
>> hear the bankers are going to be donating millions for American  
>> Democracy
>> and most of it is going to the team of rivals. Maybe that's how he  
>> bought
>> the Rolls.
>
> This kind of reading seems to argue that IV is so bad that you can't
> discuss it without discussing the latest google buzz?
You are the one who calls it crap. I like it.
>
>>
>> Actually I can see that what you are saying is a valid way to read  
>> the novel
>> -TV about TV. But the novel  itself keeps shading into the real  
>> and some
>> very real things are put front and center: the housing bubble,  
>> political
>> murder, the rape of the seas, environmental petro-poison, global  
>> financial
>> fraud, drug addiction, organized crime in government,  
>> globalization, the
>> dark side of the computer revolution etc.
>
> Have you flipped or surfed a TV recently? Lots of Real and some Very
> Real Things on the Tube.
Yes well so I presume, but that seems somewhat disconnected from your  
argument, and I see very little TV.  You said
> It's important to remember that we are reading a TV. That is, all of
> the characters are actors or wanna-be actors or were actors or are
> collecting SAG money or aping they favorite star or swagger. They all
> talking like them Tube-headed dudes, those Thanatoids.  This novel, if
> that's what it is, is Pynchon on the Simpsons--a TV Program about TV
Then you want to say it is in the tradition of great american Lit.  I  
don't think it has to be either or, but you seem to go at it one way,  
then the other.
Basically whether Velveeta and Obama bear an intentional comparison  
is not that important. What is obvious to me is that Pynchon makes  
jokes at the expense of high mucky mucks of all kinds and what is  
important is that he thinks history and politics and especially the  
untold history of the losers are worth thinking about.

JV is not key to the book but I think prostitution is an important  
theme that P touches on frequently.

>
>> I agree that he is mocking us, mocking a culture addicted to  
>> detective
>> novels that can't seem to see the crimes that are affecting their  
>> lives but
>> that  aren't  properly labeled  on TV.  But P does also name those  
>> crimes
>> and tosses out leads to show the connections between the past and the
>> present, between the crimes and the likely suspects, between our  
>> dreams, our
>> realities and our stories and jokes. I don't watch TV but my limited
>> exposure to the Simpsons seemed to show a sophisticated satiric  
>> sensibility.
>> One could find worse models for effective satire, but I think  
>> Pynchon has
>> his own.
>
> Ever read that Oklahoma Law Journal that takes up the Law in P's
> works? Check it out. It's online.
> Oklahoma City University Law Review
> Volume 24, Number 3 (1999)