IVIV: Let's race

[Mark Kohut]

L.A. then, when multi-culturalism was not a goal and label, but was real, is the first level at which I read some of these obs of John's. Obvious, I guess, but it does not explain some words of description re the women, as John says. 

I, too, was taken with the mysteriousness of Tariq's ethnicity and I'll repeat my specualtion that some of the notions of Mailer's The White Negro
may be in play here?....Doc's afro, why, if not as homage via borrowing, assimilation? 

--- On Sun, 9/20/09, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: IVIV: Let's race
> To: "Pynchon Liste" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, September 20, 2009, 6:44 AM
> As I've already mentioned, I find it
> a bit mysterious that Tariq's
> ethnicity is such a point in chapter One - explicitly
> bringing
> together the displacement of African-American, Japanese,
> Mexican and
> American Indian families in the history of LA land use -
> when other
> characters are treated differently. This chapter drops a
> number of
> markers suggesting Lourdes and Motella's ethnic background,
> along with
> those of their beaux - all except Motella use non-English
> phrases, and
> Motella's afro (and "what it be, girl!") sound pretty black
> to me. But
> Doc's got an afro too, which complicates things, and in
> this chapter
> the narratorial voice doesn't do any racial profiling at
> all. Which I
> like (as an aside, one of the things for which the recently
> mentioned
> Disgrace by Coetzee is so interesting is in the way race is
> implied by
> the power relations it offers while rarely being made
> explicit).
> 
> Anyway, just before Doc is off to hook up with Lourdes and
> Motella he
> has a brief glimpse of the Chick Planet girls. We know he
> has trouble
> telling one Californian blonde (Bambi) from another (as
> noted during
> his meeting with Hope) and when he spots Jade she's an
> oddly
> italicised *oriental cutie*.
> 
> Orientalism. Hmmm. Paging Edward Said.
> 
> Where's Jade from? I'm guessing California, the way she
> speaks. But in
> 1970 LA she's just a "bubbly young Asian lady" or an
> "oriental cutie".
> 
> They tell him to meet them at 'Club Asiatique'.
> 
> Another orientalist name that glosses over massive regional
> difference
> in the name of commercial good times. Kitsch.
> 
> The French aspect of the name might hint at Indo-China,
> which, given
> the time setting, ties in nicely to both the war in Vietnam
> and the SE
> Asian heroin cartel connection to the Golden Fang.
> 
> So Doc hooks up with those pan-continental stewardii, and
> hits those
> metaphysical freeways at an "unnecessarily suicidal
> velocity" and to
> the tune of a race-song by the Boards...
> 
> (Note: the song puts a particular emphasis - twice - on Leo
> Carillo,
> an actor: his wikipedia site states: "Although he played
> stereotypical
> Latins, Leo Carrillo was part of an old and respected
> Californio
> family who could trace their roots back to the
> conquistadores." He
> also played the sidekick Pancho in the TV series The Cisco
> Kid.)
>