V-2nd - 2: Part II - questions, comments?

[Michael Bailey]

 Laura mentioned:
>>
>> "the fraternity boy just out of an Ivy League school who knows he will never stop being a fraternity boy as long as he lives.  But who still feels he is missing something ... If he is going into management he writes.  If he is an engineer or an architect why he paints or sculpts.  He will straddle the line, aware up to the point of knowing he is getting the worst of both worlds, but never stopping to wonder why there should ever have been a line, or even if there is a line at all."
>>
>> Young Pynchon, technical writer at Boeing and aspiring novelist, mocking himself, or at least rejecting that which he's been?

as you mentioned, the "colonialism" theme crops up a lot, and maybe we
can even read it in here:

my inclination, or "bent" (as in "bent reading"), is to look at the
difference in activities -
as managers and engineers and architects they are taking part in
corporate actions which will be ineluctably bent toward reinforcing
the current power elite's world domination -
whereas writing and painting and sculpting even if they are marketable
are likely to express a personal vision that encompasses disgust with
those activities, or at least a healthy cynicism

I guess what's interesting about this passage is that he questions
this division - by showing disdain for someone who doesn't...
saying that belonging to  a Bohemian sector or having private artistic
strivings isn't enough (this much is clearly stated),
and that being part of a society engaging in colonialism is to share
guilt that is not so easily offset (this is interpolation on my part)





-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")