a euphemism... Real Scars

[alice wellintown]

> "It reads like.." to whom? "it is as if Zinn wrote it for his graphic novel", maybe for some. But thanks for trying to tell us how to read it.

To me, of course. I can't tell you how to do anything, let alone read
a novel. But the book tells us how it should be read and here, and
elsewhere, it makes the reader wonder why she has broken her neck over
1000 pages. Sure, some of the prose is beautiful. Sure the Pyncher is
full of fun and mind bending passages. Sure...all the reasons we fell
in love with Oedipa and Slothrop are here, and better and much
improved with age, but thus Hectoring, this Inherent Vice of the
Pyncher's, his propensity to break the reader contract, not with the
satirical song or silly send-off, or ripp, but with ugly speech, the
cartoon's parodic sermon on the mount of muck raking.  It reads like a
Simpson's episode, the character, in this example, Sacrsdale Vibe, has
morphed into a parodic figure, an inside joke, a winking skit so that
Vive is not a Major Marvy the Racist tossed from the train by an
African who has not infinite patience (all stereotypes), not even
satirical crank or even a mouthpiece for Pynchon's political and
revisionist sledge hammer, but a cartoon. He's morphed into a figure
on American Dad. There is, with Hector, for example, or with Marvy, or
with countless others, the cops who copy-cat the TV-cops when they
bust in on the Whole Sick Crew, Women who run the prisons in IV, a
humor that TV and Film projects in Pynchon, shadows on the wall,
echoes and parodies of westerns, detectives, periods of Hollywood and
American experimental film....etc., but here we have something that
splits the screen, a form of narrative commentary that props
characters that seem to be important to the plot and theme, to
traditional elements of fiction, but are made into pixels of politics,
cartoons.
>
>  Actually I think TP made the effort to reflect the kind of language that was used by robber baron types.   “And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department." (A. Carnegie - a good example of his social Darwinism that TP parodies in  the section mentioned.)    Or, "I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's effort than 100% of my own" (J.D Rockafeller). Reading some of the speeches of the turn of the century industrial giants will confirm this.
>
> Maybe instead of H. Zinn you should think of Gustavus Myers "A History of the Great American Fortunes". Scarsdale's rhetoric may sound over the top to you but it does reflect the sense of entitlement and disdain for others that theses robber barons (old and new) maintain.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
> ps I hope all you east coasters are well.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 1, 2012 2:17 AM
> Subject: Re: a euphemism for P's poorest prose: warm excrement flowing from a pathetic puppet's mouth
>
>
>
> No, come on...it reads like a Simpsons character, like MB, owner of the Nuke plant, no, not even, more like the sycophantic Smithers, who, like MM in Disney's Fantasia is an apprentice sorcerer...like I said, it is as if Zinn wrote it for his graphic novel...we know that the character here is saying something he would never say, not in an address to anyone, not even to a mirror or to the devil. Greed is Good! Oh, for a clip of Wall Street! Or...a song from Finian's Rainbow...a Blicero with a strap on cunt. Jeez, Tom, maybe this one is vice for Thanatoids who bend the neck out of their bodies to push thru to page 1000
>
> On Wednesday, October 31, 2012, Michael Bailey  wrote:
>
> i think - heck, i'll take a chance and say I'm pretty sure - that
>>everything vibe says in his speech was said sincerely by some robber
>>baron or right-wing ideologue - and is being echoed today by
>>Thanatoids under the same aegis
>>