Mendelson's View of P's 2ble Vision

[Markekohut]

I am afraid that, in the duck-rabbit picture analogy, if one sees satire/parody where the other sees
an inadequate presentation of ethnic types, the only response is "Look at it this way, I think your
Response is .....not right" 

Both could be wrong,of course.

Many reviewers, readers, if not the posting Plisters, dunno, asked where was the language, where was the lyricism, those incredible word-compacted scenes that were in GR, when Vineland was  published. I, too, felt it but found, finally, a different book. 

Vineland and its California-American cultural immersion may be the right oeuvre analogy for the New York-global America immersion of Bleeding Edge. 

especially since we know what he himself, at mid-life, said about CofL49. So many want to pair
That with this one...'cause of a female protagonist? Flimsy, IMHO. 

It is the cultural immersiveness, the McLuhan-grounded insight that as Godard put it, " movies are not a reflection of reality, but are the reality of the reflection". New York is the reality of the reflection in Bleeding Edge. 

Even all of the plisters who felt the parody of an upper West sIde Jew  who was "a power-player from the margins" ..." Like Karl Rove"......was not funny...........is one possible reason you thought it was not funny, or one other way it wasn't right, was that that old stereotype of pastrami mafia ( in any way,) is over in NYC. so over, the humor is historically dated? 










Sent from my iPad

On Oct 7, 2013, at 8:06 AM, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:

> << In BE, P's parody of his and our preoccupation with rich media culture is a double in the sense that P saturates the prose, the dialogue, the narrative with rich media culture to sit us down on the Simpson's couch so we can see ourselves watching ourselves transmogrified into toons, into tabloid talk, into real TV personalities, into video game avatars, etc., into a citizenship that has no privacy, no more than the Kardashians, because we don't want it. We wnt our MTV, we want to go viral on Youtube doing something so Twerky we are made into a celebrity. What's wrong with being citizens, protecting ou neighbors, our grandparents, parents and children, our privacy? But this only step one. The creative use of rich media to parody rich media is step two. So P is not out to write abook that simply says rich media is damageing to our liberty, to our greater culture. That's too obvious, too much an old man's lament and screed. Co-opt it! That's what he's done here. And it's so funny we need to laugh at it. And laughter, along with the lament for what is wasted in poor medai land, is a good tonic. >>
> 
> An interesting theory. Not that far removed form saying: "Since we live in a vacant, trash obsessed culture, the author has presented us with a vacant, trash-centric text..." To my mind, he would have served us better by writing us a decent book!
> 
> > Mr P has given us another gift of his genius. Beleive it if you need it, if you don't, pass it on. 
> 
> In as much as this seems to imply that those of us who don't like the new book just don't 'get' it, this does not do much to lend credibility to your interpretation.
> 
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20131007/34b11fe8/attachment.html>