Fwd: Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)

[Joseph Tracy]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Date: August 26, 2010 11:50:00 AM EDT
> To: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)
>
> Follow the oil, the cash,  the flesh and the dope. This is what  
> They think of as liquidity. The rest is just management issues.
>
> There is a story in the New Yorker about the Crocker family,  er  
> uh, the Koch brothers. Lays out what they look like and how they do  
> what they do.   As for Alice Wellintown's " we are helpless,  
> helpless , helpless. I guess we'll all be boiled in oil "  I  
> understand how hard it is to imagine serious change, but we are all  
> part of the success of civil rights and feminism and the ecological  
> sense that the fascists hate. If there was no threat They wouldn't  
> be working so hard to shut up the truthtellers.  At times like  
> these it is good to recall  Smokey the Bear's  War Spell. a  
> powerful incantation and key instructions against passivity and  
> numb submission, offered in Gary Snyder's   Smokey the Bear Sutra.  
> And remember that only YOU can prevent forest fires:
>
> ...And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution,  
> television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR  
> SPELL:
> DROWN THEIR BUTTS
> CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
> DROWN THEIR BUTTS
> CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
> And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with  
> his vajra-shovel.
> Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice  
> willl accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and  
> Nevada.
> Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
> Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
> Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
> Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a  
> pine tree to sit at.
> AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.
> thus have we heard.
> (may be reproduced free forever)
>
>
> On Aug 25, 2010, at 10:32 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> If you're paranoid anyway and constantly baked as well "THEY" will  
>> always be evading you. And the younger Pynchon, the Pynchon of  
>> "Gravity's Rainbow" is a notable exemplar of paranoia.  After  
>> reading "Inherent Vice" "You can guess the rest" as Brian Ferry  
>> always sez.
>>
>> I'm interested in the particulars of Pynchon's "THEM"s as there's  
>> a lot of buried history that returns to street level in TRP's  
>> pursuit of "THEM".
>>
>> On Aug 25, 2010, at 7:20 AM, rich wrote:
>>
>>> I think one can fairly say it won't matter who They become (and  
>>> let's
>>> face it alice, They are always becoming, They are never They for  
>>> when
>>> you pin down and say there They are, they are no longer They)
>>> They no longer interest me. Oil does
>>>
>>> rich
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:07 AM, alice wellintown
>>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> After reading Henry Adams, young P penned his first novel, V.. The
>>>> coal power and gun power and the forces invisible that had replaced
>>>> the Virgin's power, though not her Unity, inform V. and GR. But the
>>>> Firm has fallen. As Murphey's Law, more apt than the Law of
>>>> Deminishing return or the Law of Yaw (that which prevented the  
>>>> father
>>>> of America's "space program from putting Churchill and the Queen of
>>>> the Moo--the death kingdom), teaches, and as GR often preaches,  
>>>> THEY
>>>> can not be defeated by a counter-force or a sick crew or a fumbling
>>>> foursome of super crooks guided by the historical or parodic  
>>>> rock man,
>>>> Juthro Tull, but must fall from an inertia that only GOD, not  
>>>> Newton
>>>> with his pair of Blake's deviders or Nobodaddy with his compass,  
>>>> can
>>>> Fathom.
>>>>
>