IV - chapter 19 - page 345- 347

[Mark Kohut]

This chapter seems classic for this confrontation with the status quo. Fenway knows he's got the power. He--his class--have never reliquished it long...'we're still here" or whatever the line is...Through all of the 'revolutions' in history..........

And I thought the way Fenway says he loses all respect for types like Doc 
"when they have to pay rent".....is a nice, perhaps only-Pynchon, touch:

If Doc and his type---hippies---can live totally 'free', outside the system, with no pad even, Fenway suggests, ironically, sarcastically, cynically, of course, that THEN he could respect him/them.............

But he knows no one can live that way for very long. The endless summer beach will be---is---over (again). 

Given the real estate theme in IV, another spin on Inherent Vice is that 
it is property owned by others?....so to speak. 



--- On Thu, 1/7/10, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> From: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: IV - chapter 19 - page 345- 347
> To: "Bekah" <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010, 11:31 AM
> On Jan 6, 2010, at 9:46 PM, Bekah
> wrote:
> 
> > And Fenway,   "It's about
> <italics> being in place <end italics>." 
>    Now,  repeat that slowly: 
>    *** BEING IN PLACE ***
> > 
> > Why the italics - what is that signifying?  Or is
> Fenway emphasizing it with his
> voice?   (Again, 
> why?)   The idea of "being in place" is kind
> of Buddhist or Confucian in some
> respects.   But keeping or minding your place
> is also Victorian thinking.  And the concept of
> "numeric place value" is accounting and capitalism again.
> 
> Oh it's just the attitude of old Fenway and his
> determination to "protect and maintain the status
> quo,"  (an old phrase from those days.)
> 
> That's the obvious motivation for those comments but I
> neglected to be specific about it.
> 
> Bek
>