Greil Marcus: IV & "L.A. Women"

[Albert Rolls]

Twenty-nine’s Fell Shadow! O, inhospitably final year of any Pretense to Youth, its Dreams now, how wither’d away . . . tho’ styl’d a Prime, yet bid’st thou Adieu to the Prime of Life! . . .  there, in the Stygian Mists of Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty,-- Transition unspeakable! Prime so soon fallen, thy Virtu so easily broken, into a Number divisible,-- penetrable!—by six others!”

M&D

-----Original Message-----
>>From: Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com>
>>Sent: Dec 12, 2011 3:25 PM
>>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: RE: Greil Marcus: IV & "L.A. Women"
>>
>>"... the instant Doc turned thirty, which would be any minute now ..."
>>(199).
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
>>Of Bekah
>>Sent: 12 December 2011 19:48
>>To: rich; Robert Mahnke
>>Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org"
>>Subject: Re: Greil Marcus: IV & "L.A. Women"
>>
>>Can I agree with both of you?   
>>
>>L.A. Woman has the whole darkening, Manson era  LA scene circa 1970 (because
>>that's who they were!).   And yes,  I feel that same spirit, ambiance,
>>mood,  in Inherent Vice.  This is a compliment to Pynchon imo -  he got it
>>right.  
>>
>>But like Rich,   I thought Doc was a bit older - he tended to wander off and
>>visit the jazz bars,  he was certainly no teen-ager,  no young wanna-be rock
>>star.   Doc seemed like an older brother to the actual L.A. nights
>>participants like Shasta,  Coy Harlingen and Japonica Fenway (others) ,  and
>>maybe a year or two younger than Bigfoot and Mickey Wolfmann,  while quite a
>>bit younger than Crocker Fenway.   Pynchon was 33 years old when he lived in
>>the area in 1970 -  I'd put Doc at about 29 - (never trust anyone over 30.) 
>>
>>I had to stir some Door juices  with:
>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=eOTwcrQFjuw&feature=endscreen
>>
>>and
>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo6Es-itLg0&feature=related
>>(better music and with some cars and a bit of the city but a few parts of it
>>are pretty stupid) 
>>
>>Bekah
>>
>>
>>
>>On Dec 12, 2011, at 10:58 AM, rich wrote:
>>
>>> is Sportello that young? thought he was a bit older than that. I could be
>>wrong
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>> You write that you can hear "L.A. Woman" being played "between every
>>> other line" of Thomas Pynchon's 2009 Los Angeles detective novel
>>> Inherent Vice. Could you talk about why you made the correlation
>>> between Pynchon's work and that song?
>>> 
>>> "L.A. Woman" is recorded in 1970 and comes out in 1971. Inherent Vice
>>> is set in 1970, just as the Manson trial is about to begin. And
>>> both-the book explicitly and the song not explicitly-is really
>>> shadowed by Charles Manson, by the crimes he and his family committed,
>>> and the specter of more crimes of death and destruction and revenge
>>> whether for real reasons or completely random, is just hanging over
>>> Los Angeles and a lot of the country at that moment. And both
>>> Pynchon's book and "L.A. Woman" seem to capture both that sense of
>>> dread and fear, but also a sense of the absurd, the ridiculousness,
>>> the craziness of that moment too, and to laugh at it. "L.A. Woman" is
>>> a very funny, loose, free, open piece of music, and Pynchon's novel is
>>> hilarious and scary and upsetting and confusing. And its hero is an
>>> almost 30-year-old private eye named Doc Sportello, and he's part of
>>> the atmosphere in the song "L.A. Woman." He's the kind of person whose
>>> radio plays Doors songs. And maybe he's too cool to be a fan of the
>>> band. Who knows? That's not the point. Both Pynchon and The Doors are
>>> drawing maps of L.A., one in a song and one in a detective story.
>>> 
>>>
>>http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/greil-marcus-on-why
>>-the-doors-still-matter/249697/
>>> 
>>