BEER - chapters 7 and 8, notes and questions

[Fiona Shnapple]

I propose to examine the often conscious complicity
with which Pynchon's text employs the reality-bolstering, and also reality-
simulating, fantasies conforming its postmodern media environment. To
"bust" the "ghost" of the real is to partake of reality's "ghostly"
derealization
in a context of intense simulation; it is to submit to complicitous participa-
tion in the "ghosting" of the real. But it is also an attempt to recover the
"Real Death" literally necessary for the posthumous hauntings of "real" ghosts
that simulation's "death of the real" would seem to banish to the inert media-
tions of prime-time TV viewing. It is ultimately an attempt to restore a sense
of "hauntedness" to a real bereft of any ontological weight, a real whose
"ghost" is only a media simulation.
Vineland approaches this ethical task, often in a tone of self-conscious
buffoonery, through its attempt to re-establish the suppressed hauntedness of
the real by fictionally exorcising the "ghost" of a simulated reality.

"Ghostbusters": Fantasy and Postmodern Death in Thomas Pynchon's
"Vineland"  José Liste Noya

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 6:10 PM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Ghostbusters": Fantasy and Postmodern Death in Thomas Pynchon's
> "Vineland"  José Liste Noya
>
> a difficult read but worth it.
>
> judicious use of   Keesey, Douglas. "Nature and the Supernatural:
> Pynchon's Ecological Ghost Stories." Pynchon
> Notes 18-19 (1986): 84-95
>
> On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 3:12 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I see the violent video game-playing as some kind of "corrupted catharsis",
>> if that makes sense.
>>      1) have you ever seen kids identify with the action heroes.......so,
>> here I see P embodying their
>>          adolescent 'rebellion' in the games...........
>>      2) partly because THIS is a/the major way so many kids get to 'act out"
>> aggression and
>>          violence pervades our modern Western world....reminds me of the
>> Chainsaw (and other) slasher
>>          movies P noticed fro Vineland....
>> In some way, no wonder violence comes.........
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, November 10, 2013 4:45 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
>> <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>> A few late notes and questions on chapters 7 to 8, hopefully not too
>> redundant.
>>
>> Chapter 7
>>
>> p. 68:
>>
>> Melanie's Mall - an (early?) example of pink horror for girls:
>>
>> http://www.melaniesmall.50webs.com/Files/largemallscan.jpg
>>
>> The site says MM was produced in 1995 and 1997 and then faded away. Was
>> this huge? Was it the first of its kind?
>>
>> Otis and Fiona invariably destroy the mall but the sympathies here seem
>> to be with them and the action figures laying waste to the 'suburban
>> idyll' (or perhaps these are only my sympathies). As with the yuppie
>> shooter (p. 33-34), the make believe violence hurts no-one. Note that
>> this is a different target: first Upper West Side yuppies, then a
>> suburban mall.
>>
>> As Monte pointed out, the destruction of the mall center (and for me
>> especially the 'generic plastic bodies horizontal and disassembled
>> everywhere') obliquely prefigures the catastrophe about to happen in the
>> real world.
>>
>> p. 70: "They (Justin and Lucas) don't do metaphysical." - interesting,
>> in light of the scrying thread.
>>
>> p. 71: third line from the bottom of the page: 'there might not much
>> difference' - there seems to be something missing here, probably BE (no,
>> I don't attach any significance to it).
>>
>> p. 72: 'Who was less innocent here?' - the line between fuckers and
>> fuckees blurring, as usual
>>
>> 'seed and angel money' - 'seed money', ok, looked it up, but what is
>> 'angel money'
>>
>> p. 73: 'American greenhorns of a century ago venturing into the
>> history-haunted Old World' - a nod to Henry James
>>
>> p. 78: 'bleeding-edge technology' - first (only?) mention
>>
>> Chapter 8
>>
>> 83: Pre-9/11-paranoia sets in heavily. First hawala, then: "'Something's
>> up, (...) Maybe even something that's got to be stopped.'" "bankrolling
>> something, something big and invisible---"
>>
>> Hashslingrz, perhaps a front for a US-government secret service, seems
>> to use hawala in order to provide secret funds to some entity in Dubai.
>> It is implied that these funds may be used for the terrorist attacks on
>> 9/11. As Robin said, this is what is derisively called "truther"
>> material. Of course, we will encounter a lot more of it later.
>>
>> 84: Maxine is already developing a crush on Eric, "sherpa of the Deep
>> Web, faithful and maybe even cute".
>>
>> 86: Public Void Close - seems to be Java Script. What does it mean?
>>
>> Much thanks to Monte and Robin.
>>
>> Thomas
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>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l