Telegraph Avenue (was RE: Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco)

[Erik T. Burns]

a-and of course Berkeley is in TCOL49:

http://californiamag.typepad.com/california_magazine_blog/2010/08/berkeley-in-books-pynchons-lot.html

(as TRP was in Berkeley: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm)



On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> How is Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (which I’m finishing now) being
> received in its Oakland/Bay Area setting? Beyond the “Pynchonesque” and
> “Nefastis Building” that Michael Bailey noted last fall, there are many
> debts being paid and hommages offered, e.g.:****
>
> ** **
>
> Former NFL star and Branson-like entrepreneur Gibson  “G Bad” Goode is
> planning a huge new media store in Oakland, which threatens the fading
> used-record shop co-owned by Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. Goode stakes
> Stallings for a ride in his airship, the _*Minnie Riperton*_ (“She is
> black. She is beautiful. And she goes really high”)****
>
> ** **
>
> “Archy [was] unable to shake a feeling not just that he was stepping out
> on Nat Jaffe, up here dining on shrimp and flattery and all kinds of
> piquant sauces, but that he was in over his head, that he was going to be
> edged into doing something or agreeing to something that he did not want to
> do or agree to, into something at least that he did not understand, some
> kind of business being transacted by Goode… memories of watching him on
> television as he conducted instantaneous Einstein-deep analyses in the
> pocket under a heavy rush (not to mention the simple fact that he was
> visiting the man in the cabin of his personal zeppelin that flew on the gas
> of burning dollars)…”****
>
> ** **
>
> Gasbags aside, anyone else hear the stylistic/paranoiac echoes here?****
>
> ** **
>
> Chabon lives in Berkeley. As an East Coaster with only visiting
> experience, I can’t address the book’s accuracy/authenticity with respect
> to the real place… but as an American reader with multiple Californias of
> the mind overlapping since the 1960s, I think he engages how we’ve “run out
> of continent” there almost as well as Vineland did, and better than
> Inherent Vice did.   ****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Ian Livingston
> *Sent:* Sunday, March 03, 2013 9:55 AM
> *To:* Bled Welder
> *Cc:* rich; “pynchon-l at waste.org“
> *Subject:* Re: Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco****
>
> ** **
>
> Oakland does, indeed have abundant character and culture. It has been the
> Bay Area slum for decades, where the arts and ideas fester like lilies on
> the shore, are borne over the bay by rumor to be claimed by the elder
> sister, while the younger, more impetuous one languishes in skankified
> infamy. I like Oakland.****
>
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com> wrote:*
> ***
>
> But you're....Oakland.  What is that water that lays between. the
> peninsula and Oakland?  Isn't there a large bridge?  Been over it many
> times myself.
>
> Not as in, walking, by byself.  Driving.  I think occasionally one has
> the misfortune of landing somewhere called Oakland....****
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 8:32 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:****
>
> > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary
> >
> > good piece on the effects of Google and its ilk on the culture of San
> > Francisco. interesting contrast with Gold Rush in the 19th century and
> > the mining rush in Wyoming, North Dakota and other places today. lots
> > of Pynchonian echoes
> >
> > Rich
> >
> > 'All this is changing the character of what was once a great city of
> > refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists. Like so
> > many cities that flourished in the post-industrial era, it has become
> > increasingly unaffordable over the past quarter-century, but still has
> > a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics
> > and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations– though we
> > may be a relic population. Boomtowns also drive out people who perform
> > essential services for relatively modest salaries, the teachers,
> > firefighters, mechanics and carpenters, along with people who might
> > have time for civic engagement. I look in wonder at the store clerks
> > and dishwashers, wondering how they hang on or how long their commute
> > is. Sometimes the tech workers on their buses seem like bees who
> > belong to a great hive, but the hive isn’t civil society or a city;
> > it’s a corporation.'
> >
> > Last summer, I went to look at a house for sale whose listing hadn’t
> > mentioned that the house was inhabited. I looked in dismay at the
> > pretty old house where a family’s possessions had settled like silt
> > over the decades: drum set, Bibles, faded framed portraits, furniture
> > grimed with the years, cookware, toys. It was a display of what was
> > about to be lost. The estate agent was on the front steps telling
> > potential clients that they wouldn’t even have to evict: just raise
> > the rent far beyond what the residents can afford. Ye who seek homes,
> > come destroy the homes of others more frail.****
>
> ** **
>
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