Come on, Come on, Lolita, Start the projection machine

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 7, 2010, at 6:28 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

>> Boyz are subjected to young P's C/catholic Love in the Western  
>> World critique. Not Lolita by any stretch...not even a peep show in  
>> Nabokov's Baedeckerland, but it still works well enough. The gang- 
>> bang? Jeeez, well . . . of course P does expose his racist views of  
>> Fina and her up-town sistha hood in the hood, and this can't sit  
>> any better than a nose job on a cuny Jap, but come on, come on,  
>> soon you will be sixteen ....
>>
>
> gangs and abuse are bad, is the lesson.

Don't rule out the possibility of depiction of varieties of the  
heretic experience coming from a good Catholic boy who's seriously  
considering going bad.

> P was right to later recoil from blatantly setting
> this lesson amongst the Others - Stephen King, say what you will, from
> the start of his career,
> indicts bloody-minded groupthink among his own race/class/neighborhood
> droogies with great aplomb (aplomb?) - verisimilitude
> (verisimilitude?) - fidelity (fidelity?)

	"What, I should only trust good people? man, good people get
	bought and sold every day. Might as well trust somebody evil
	once in a while, it makes no more or less sense. I mean I
	wouldn't give odds either way."

> - well, anyway, with a
> "sticking to what he knows" that the author of the SL preface I think
> would admire.  An underestimated author, in my estimation...for other
> reasons besides that as well...

There is a party in Tunbridge Wells, England that would differ with you.

> But, I would argue, some of that drive to roam far afield and so forth
> serves Pynchon and his readers well.  We're looking for "young blood"
> after all, gargle it, use it for a moufwash...unusual perspectives,
> after going all around then to arrive home and know the place for the
> first time (or something like that)

More likely that you'll arrive home and find that:

	AROUND NIGHTFALL TITO LET DOC OFF ON DUNECREST,
	AND IT was like landing on some other planet. He walked into
	the Pipeline to find a couple hundred people he didn't know but
	who were acting like longtime regulars. Worse, nobody he did
	know was there at all. No Ensenada Slim or Flaco the Bad, no
	St. Flip or Downstairs Eddie. Doc looked into Wavos and Epic
	Lunch, and the Screaming Ultraviolet Brain, and Man of La
	Muncha, where the menudo got your nose running just looking
	at it, and each time it was the same story. Nobody he
	recognized. He thought briefly about going to his apartment but
	started worrying that he wouldn't recognize it either or, worse, it
	wouldn't know him-wouldn't be there, key wouldn't fit or
	something. Then it occurred to him that maybe Tito had actually
	dropped him in some other beach town, Manhattan or Hermosa
	or Redondo, and that the bars, eateries, and so forth he'd been
	walking into were ones that happened to be similarly located in
	this other town-same view of the ocean or corner of the street,
	for example-so he grasped his head carefully in both hands
	and, mentally advising himself to focus in and pay attention,
	waited for the next nonthreatening pedestrian to come by.

	"Excuse me, sir, I seem to be a little disoriented? could you
	please tell me if this is by any chance Gordita Beach?" as
	sanely as he could manage, and instead of running off in panic
	after the nearest law enforcement, this party said, "Wow, Doc,
	it's me, you okay? you look like you're freaking out," and after a
	while Doc dug how this was Denis, or somebody impersonating
	Denis, which, in the circumstances, he'd settle for.

	"Where is everybody, man?"

	"Some college break or something. A lot of junior hell-raisers in
	town. I'm sticking close to the tube till it's over."

	IV, 256/257