Why Windust & Maxine?

[Mark Kohut]

Addendum:
 
Thinking of the critique of many plisters who felt the sitcom-like wit and superficial jokes made
BE a weak book........
And I say, this 'superficiality' is part of the social point. We are so superficial it takes an experienced 'fraud
detector' to get US today. 
 
(Does anyone think someone like Marcuse or even a less original Marxist-infused cultural critic of the sixties
would have minded be dubbed a "fraud detector"?....
 
Would Chomsky embrace the term? 



On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 6:55 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
  
Yes, Pynchon loves cartoons and much else we call pop or mass culture.
 
 He also likes 
low puns, jokes (some lame), and songs to groan about.....
These are little bursts of good things in the tough life and situations most of his characters find themselves in. 
 
I see the cartoons and other bits of 'mass culture' similarly. I also see, for example, how he notices the growth
of popularity of violent movies, Freddie Kreuger ones in Vineland, for example and other aspects of how we 
9as a society) become what surrounds us....music too,  obviously
 
I do not see him finding 'mass culture' mind-numbing (as some pundits and social observers say) but, bad and good
depending......from his immersion in McLuhan, it just IS what we swim in......
and we--and geniuses like him--- have to "see" what it means.....
 
With BE and the televisual, I did think the way Maxine (and all) wisecracked and saw thru pop forms almost showed
the opposite......their minds aren't numbed, they are as witty as sitcoms, but still..........blind to the reality under their 
nose......
 
 
 
 
 
 



On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 1:05 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
  
Although I think P does note the mind-numbing potential of mass media like TeeVee, I think he also knows that it is nothing new. Tabloids have always made people stoopid.  Likewise commercials.  Headlines are blatant bait-switchers. All that is about the manipulation of the viewer for the media's ends.  Point taken.

But Pynchon loves his Hollywood and Cartoons.  Over the top entertainment is his revelry and hilarity.  So media and popular are not Death. Not at all. He loves all that funk.  He has a big sense of humor, and it is not all dark. He loves Disney & Dumbo.  Dumbo's feather is from the dead Albatross. Sin versus Hope (not Saintliness). 

David Morris

On Sunday, December 15, 2013, Fiona Shnapple  wrote:

Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which
>totalitariangovernments seize individual rights, from that offered by
>Aldous Huxley inBrave New World, where people medicate themselves into
>bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an
>analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television's
>entertainment value as a present-day "soma", by means of which the
>consumers' rights are exchanged for entertainment.
>
>The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest
>of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content," that is, a
>particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus
>Rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against
>by the medium of television for the aforesaid reason. Owing to this
>shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day"
>becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of
>information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of
>entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is
>subordinate.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
>-
>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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