V2nd - Chapter 8 the indifferent pioneer

[alice wellintown]

As Pynchon sez in that Slow Learner Introduction, kidz today is much
smarter than they wuz back the when he wuz a young sophist
sophisticate sophomore, and todayz kids had got that wikipedia.org.
now, I aint bout to argue that young P was a dumb-ass or nothin, far
from it on both counts, but he didn't have no wiki. His anglo-saxon DC
should remind us of Lewis and Clark and Audubon and Boone, the black
man and the native man and the Teddy on the Horse at the Museum of
Natural History, and why not toss in King the geologist for good
measure and we get Henry Adams. Henry has this bad feeling about
Southerners and Slavery and questioned the white man's burgeoning pack
of guts and blood and tears. V.'s white negroness and its
Adams-Feminist shots in the night watchman's light down the Beaten
road does make it kinda tired, as Robin keeps wakin us, tellin us, but
it is quite a remarkable achievement for its time and the authors on
this earth. Heck, I bet they come out with a J. Kerry Grant Companion
to V. any day now.


On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> "This man, a foul-mouthed louseridden booze-hound, a corrupt
> legislator and an indifferent pioneer, was being set up for the
> nation's youth as a towering and clean-limbed example of Anglo-Saxon
> superiority."
>
> was he really that bad?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett
> As a Congressman, Crockett supported the rights of squatters, who were
> barred from buying land in the West without already owning property.
> He also opposed President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act, and his
> opposition to Jackson caused his defeat when he ran for re-election in
> 1830; however, he won when he ran again in 1832....
>
> In an 1884 book written by dime novelist[13] and non-fiction
> author[14] Edward S. Ellis, Crockett is recorded as giving a speech
> (the "Not Yours to Give" speech) critical of his Congressional
> colleagues who were willing to spend taxpayer dollars to help a widow
> of a US Navy man who had lived beyond his naval service, but would not
> contribute their own salary for a week to the cause....The
> authenticity of this speech is questioned, however, since the Register
> of Debates and the Congressional Globe do not contain transcripts of
> speeches made on the House floor. Crockett is on record opposing a
> similar bill and offering personal support to the family of a General
> Brown in April 1828,[17] but Crockett considered applications for
> relief on a case by case basis and sometimes voted in favor of the
> applicant.[18]  An article by Crockett biographer James R. Boylston
> debunking the "Not Yours to Give" speech was published in the November
> 2004 issue of The Crockett Chronicle.[19]
>
> ----------
>
>
> where is all the hate for Crockett coming from?  In the whole
> wikipedia article I didn't really find anything so terrible.
> maybe Roonie, or the narrator, just hates the song (I used to like it,
> but I was like 5 during the 2nd airing)
>
> we know Pynchon hated "Abba Dabba Honeymoon"...
> sometimes certain things just get under your skin!  I used to
> experience the "ring around the collar" Wisk commercial like
> blackboard-nails, for instance...
>
>
>
>
> --
> - "After all, Salaam and Shalom are only slight different spellings of
>  a word that means the same thing in Arabic and Hebrew.
> Which translated into English means peace be upon you." - Norman Spinrad
>