IVIV20: Maybe then, 368-369

[rich]

I thought Vineland and M&D had relatively positive endings. the darker
turn to the last decade or so lends itself to the feeling that
Pynchon's scant optimism has been surely tested. It's pretty sad
really.

I think much of the old man poetry in M&D was diluted in AtD by its
sheer ambition and totally dispensed with in IV.

It was hard for me to feel much of anything at the end of IV. far
removed from any sense of tragedy, waste, or deep melancholia one
would intuit from all those fog references. It feels to me like one of
those leaps at something more meaningful as spoken by some loser on
the Love Boat.

I'm getting old and have less and less time/patience for unleavened
confectionary

think of all those stabs at human connection in the movie Watchmen.
millions incinerated but I get along with my mom now. comic book
heroics with stabs at gritty realism--as in pinochle that's a hard
meld to make folks on the best of days

rich


rich

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 6:10 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> As one of the some-who-did-not-like-the-book-as-much-as-many, I thought the fog-obscured drive was one of the better (if not the best) passages in the book, almost echoing the "Now everybody" ending of GR, in its pessimism and sense of camaraderie in the face of shared doom.  Does anyone see anything hopeful or positive in the ending?  There were differences of opinion on whether the endings of Vineland and ATD were meant to be upbeat.  I weigh in on the dark side, in all cases.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>Sent: Feb 3, 2010 5:45 PM
>>To: pynchon-l at waste.org, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>>Subject: Re: IVIV20: Maybe then, 368-369
>>
>>Hey Foax,
>>
>>We've waned.....jump in on Paul's annotated ending with some obs, I cheerlead.  Particularly, what do we all think about the ending??
>>
>>I wrote, hypingly, "almost-sublime" about it, but that is hype....it is smoothly fine, smoothly sweet, so nicely meshed with story and many of P's themes, I think.
>>
>>What do some who did not like the book as much as many think just of the ending?
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>--- On Sat, 1/30/10, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>>> Subject: IVIV20: Maybe then, 368-369
>>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>> Date: Saturday, January 30, 2010, 11:24 AM
>>> The chapter began with Doc, inspired
>>> by sporting loss, leaving home to seek
>>> company, "tak[ing] his disappointment out on the road"
>>> (364). On 366 he asks
>>> Sparky if he can "look in here once in a while".
>>>
>>> Here, returning home, he thinks of those he might know in
>>> the same situation
>>> (368). Up the page, anonymity, "a convoy of indeterminate
>>> size", and no way
>>> of knowing anyone. At the start of the twentieth century
>>> modernist writers
>>> like Durkheim and Tonnies described the alienation inherent
>>> in urban
>>> societies; in the 1960s alienation was inherent in the
>>> consumer society
>>> described by Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man. IV ends with
>>> the attempt to
>>> reconstruct some kind of community, however ironic his
>>> speculations (the
>>> "alumni associations" that return again and again to a
>>> meaningful moment).
>>>
>>> From speculating about an indeterminate future, "phones as
>>> standard
>>> equipment in every car ..." etc, Doc wonders about what
>>> he'll do here and
>>> now "if he misse[s] the Gordita Beach exit" (368). Doc's
>>> reading of
>>> landscape (a nod at documentary realism: "He knew that at
>>> Rosecrans ..."
>>> etc) is succeeded by speculation: "Maybe then it would stay
>>> this way for
>>> days ..." etc (369). There are alternative endings on offer
>>> here, the
>>> fantasy that offers anonymity as a kind of liberation
>>> ("across a border
>>> where nobody could tell anymore in the fog who was Mexican,
>>> who was Anglo,
>>> who was anybody") set against passivity, not for the first
>>> time Doc
>>> "pull[ing] over on the shoulder and wait[ing]". The latter
>>> option has cops
>>> and "a restless blonde", the citizen still a PI.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>