IVIV1: Introducing Pynchon's burgher

[Michael Bailey]

yes, I'm not going to sit here and defend laissez faire capitalism and
caveat emptor
- that, as Alice has pointedly, um, pointed out, is not what we're
about, right?  And it's not my trip, really it's not.  I'm familiar
with the
arguments and proponents a bit, enough to notice the money flows to
the rich dudes from stuff like government mineral leases, and the
fiat money motherlode, but they
begrudge school lunches, type of thing...miserly Scrooge-like f*cks...

no, I guess I was just building my dwelling with straw within the role
of Doc and got a little too close to my subject, fell asleep on the
roof...

(this was in gratitude for the following, but not really an adequate
response to it) ---

Joseph Tracy wrote:
> I like Michael's thoughts here. I think this book may seem or indeed be less
> ambitious as a scrying pool into the big enchilada, but  it has some fresh
> qualities that intrigue me. Something I sense in IV is a greater humanizing
> of all characters, both  seedy and slightly less seedy. Harder to find the V
> character.   He seems to be exploring the idea of the interdependence of
> good and evil, muscle and brain, love and lust , con and conned,
> forbidden-ness and commerce. Isn't justice a kind of repo man?  Doc
> Sportello wanted to be a cop detective when he was a kid;  they just
> criminalized the wrong shit.
>
> Anyway, no matter what you personally like detecting, it kinda gets in the
> blood and pretty soon you are detecting some very suspicious  shit; you
> apply the rules to the rule-makers and wind up with rooms full of puzzling
> evidence. Here's a little tidbit from Democracy Now.
>  UK Deports Former Guantanamo Guard
> The British government has deported a former Guantanamo guard who was
> scheduled to address a meeting of Cageprisoners, a human rights organization
> that tries raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
> The former guard, Terry Holdbrooks, has become an outspoken critic of the US
> government over the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo. Holdbrooks was
> denied entry into Britain after landing at Heathrow airport on Saturday.
> Holdbrooks told the Observer newspaper of London that he had also been
> detained and questioned by US airport officials on Thursday, as he attempted
> to complete the first stage of his journey.
>
> Calling all junior and senior members of the private eyes... time to get out
> the secret decoder rings. I think I'm picking up messages from Lemuria.
>
>
>
> On Aug 31, 2009, at 2:19 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>
>> Why is a repo person automatically heinous?
>>
>> People buy things on credit, but fail to pay --
>> "what's a mother to do?"
>>
>> He carries the bag but never uses it.  That's laudable.
>>
>> He has a specific mission - to get the goods (as the IWW saying
>> goes, "direct action gets the goods") and - unless all of contract law
>> is to be thrown out as inadmissible impositions of The Man -
>> he is performing a real service.
>>
>> ...yeah, yeah, buy-on-credit places
>> jack up the price, and easily available credit leads people to live
>> beyond their means, so forth, but these are systemic ills and have
>> much more to do with inherent flaws in capitalism, or, to avoid that
>> jargon,
>> with areas where the human ability to interact gracefully is
>> still developing (sort of like, hey, where was language or algebra
>> a few thousand years ago - they didn't even have a word for
>> antidisestablishmentarianism in Egypt, nor did Greek math have a zero,
>> so I suspect there's some unknown right now that will make a huge
>> difference in the spreading of wealth sometime, when it takes hold
>> ("the reds are talking hold" - Hunter S Thompson)) so forth, than with
>> the legitimacy of private collection efforts in any individual case...
>>
>> but we've established his efforts were non-violent, right?
>>
>> His private-enterprise role pretty much prevents him being corrupt
>> to any great extent: collude with one deadbeat and his job is pretty much
>> toast.  He has to get the car, or whatever, back.
>>
>> OK, he can occasionally let one of his skip-tracees slip, in theory,
>> but again, private enterprise reduces the worth of that service since
>> the seekers can just send somebody else.  And it won't look good
>> on his quarterly review.
>>
>> Now, having defended the noble repo person / skip tracer,
>> (pretty much sincerely)...
>>
>> One of the things I think is going on in IV as well as most
>> noir fiction is sorting out the PI's stance on the cops.
>>
>> I'd call the PI - cop relationship a fairly good approximation
>> of the dilemma of citizen v state writ small, which I bet somebody
>> cleverer
>> and better-read has already noticed...but it's sorta new to me...
>>
>> Nobody's perfect - as somebody in Doc's profession certainly notices.
>>
>> Cops have such a broad mandate, a fuzzy agenda, that it's much
>> easier for them to cover up malfeasance and stay employed.
>>
>> Cops have more power, are expected to stay busy all the time,
>> they are supposed to enforce a rule of law, while it's human nature
>> to be loyal to buddies, bosses (to some extent), to favor people
>> who are like unto oneself....
>>
>> I could go on and on, but although I think I was onto something 3
>> paragraphs
>> back, I'm pretty sure I'm spinning my wheels now!  Where did I go wrong?
>>
>> I did want to defend the humble repo person - check
>> I did want to say I relish an interplay of forces between cop and pi -
>> check
>>
>> I wanted to say nice things about cops (to some extent)
>> - if a cop isn't bent or brutal, he or she is certainly a valuable
>> part of society!
>>
>> Fnord
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Furthermore, in the postmodern usage of Menippean satire it is
>> considered appropriate to abbreviate concepts, but not to omit
>> articles." - Keith
>
>
>



-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass