BEER - chapters 7 and 8, notes and questions

[Fiona Shnapple]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_doll_experiment


On Tuesday, November 12, 2013, Fiona Shnapple wrote:

> 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 me
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