chapter 10 - notes and questions 1

[John Bailey]

Guys and Dolls is terrifically on point - won the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama but due to one of the writers' Unamerican branding no prize was
awarded that year (sound familiar?).

Plot heavily involves shifty US gangsters heading to Central America
with shady personal motives, in this case trying to score with a
missionary. Always felt it deeply inappropriate for schoolkids given
that the leading doll falls for a guy after he spikes her drink and
gets her boozed up. Plus the motives of the guys are simian at best
and the dolls are happy to end up with the first fella who treats them
only slightly better than a washcloth.

The James Bond references are starting to feel more apt - he is after
all a Cold War dinosaur himself, perhaps the most unreconstructed one,
as later movies made explicit. I'm not sure how big he is in the US
but the figure of Bond really is one of the most iconic of the 20th
century and has frequently been used as a lens through which to
explore the intersection of global politics and pop culture.

Surprised that PROMIS is real... and that Australian documentary is
ancient! The age of the presenter (Jana Wendt) there suggests maybe
1988-90.

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>> p. 96: "Guys and Dolls" -- didn't know anything about this. After
>> perusing Wiki I know a lot more, especially about Frank Loesser (p. 97)
>> and Damon Runyon.
>
>
> As noted earlier, G&D is a High School favorite, expesially on the
> UWS, where Madona's daughter, at Stuy, Lady Gaga, at Sacred Heart’s
> brother school, Regis High School, take the leads.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l