...the Next Big American Anti-Intellectual(WAS...)

[Ian Livingston]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:03 AM,  <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
> All good points. And it goes to the heart of the
> American dilemma- the difficulty with and
> mistrust of things intellectual. Sometimes I
> think Inherent Vice a rejection of the author's
> youthful ambitions- his Elliot period. Sometimes,
> it seems more an attempt to subvert the
> foundamentalist tendencies of the right wing
> christian nation America has always been,
> by demonstrating another branch of that
> common anti-intellectual root, i.e., the private
> eye option.
>
> That may be too generous, though. After a
> promising start, Elliot caved and turned to
> the orthodox irrationality of the anglican "hedge
> fund."

Yes, if we understand that "fundamentalism" and "right wing" refer not
to conservativism as resistance to change, but rather as radical
change posed as a sort of Freudian return to "the way things oughta
be, dammit." Fundamentalism was new at the end of the Medieval period,
presented as the way Christianity started, which was then and is now a
load of horseshit. It is now and was then a matter of selective
inattention to the Bible even as the Bible itself was compiled by
sifting through texts after specific themes that helped prop up the
dying empire under Constantine.

The anti-intellectualist element is a given. Those who don't think
follow, after all, like good sheep following good-and-drunken
shepherds. That private eye option, too, resembles very much the
gelded ram who raises his head and cries out that we're all heading
for a cliff, then ponders what would make a whole flock just run over
a cliff and decides that Somebody must be after us.

Marx was the true conservative--returning to Jewish texts to
reinvigorate the notion of common care that was so vital to all tribal
groups.

I think V. was a sort of fond farewell to "modernism" in the scholarly
sense of the word. Like the beats, Pynchon was waving so long to all
that to rediscover something that was lost with the "moderns"--what
Henry James called "thickness" and what was quickly mockingly
dismissed in the 70s as depth ("Oh, that's SO deep")--that life is
more than the show--it is really, really complex and impossible to
nail to a myth like Ulysses, or Tiresias, or Atlas, etc. and so on.
Hence Oedipa, Slothrop, Prairie, etc.

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:03 AM,  <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
> All good points. And it goes to the heart of the
> American dilemma- the difficulty with and
> mistrust of things intellectual. Sometimes I
> think Inherent Vice a rejection of the author's
> youthful ambitions- his Elliot period. Sometimes,
> it seems more an attempt to subvert the
> foundamentalist tendencies of the right wing
> christian nation America has always been,
> by demonstrating another branch of that
> common anti-intellectual root, i.e., the private
> eye option.
>
> That may be too generous, though. After a
> promising start, Elliot caved and turned to
> the orthodox irrationality of the anglican "hedge
> fund."
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, Mar 9, 2011 7:29 am
> Subject: Re: Is the Paul Anderson Pynchon's Inherent Vice the Next Big
> Lebowski
>
>
> Nice excuse for some PR...but
>
> The Big Lebowski wasn't The Big Lebowski when released. It was NOT Fargo,
> many,
> many said.
>
> And, trying to label a movie the next cult classic is like a company sending
> out
>
> its YouTube promo to thousands and
> claiming it is viral. Already.
>
> And, The Big Lebowski had no original book to be found different/lacking
> from.
> Just sayin'.
>
> Yet, I am eager to see this myself just because...
>
>
>



-- 
"Psyche pasa athantos." --Plato