mayBE?

[Joseph Tracy]

> "... every one of these books is considered "lesser" and every one is set in contemporary "hip" US.  And none of us remembers the final days of WWII in Germany,  the US colonial era,  or the world-wide events leading up to WWI. 


I find this an excellent point. But for myself I have liked every P book, and have only regarded IV as not so much lesser but differently targeted and lighter. BE is the first book that I am seriously underwhelmed by and that may still change but not through arguments with Alice Fiona Terrence, Robsom Robson, Revd.  BE just feels not so much like a satire of Pop culture but too much like the shallow end of culture itself, even as it were the shallow end of P's own writing, An X-files meets Simpson's episode. Then there is the weird repeat performance of girl lefty fucks irresistable fascist dick, which either is a message too oft repeated by P or  lack of imagination, or maybe some kind of confession. Bless me reader for I have sinned and am currently having an imaginary affair with Ann Coulter in the management suite of Google. Maybe there is something about intense commitment to political ideas of any kind that Pynchon is commenting on. But where is his commitment? Krav Maga? I'm not opposed to self defense at all, just as a philosophy.
  Maybe BE is deliberate obfuscation under layers of pop debris, and is hiding something more pungent, serious, real.  
It isn't the set that is bothering me, but the substance of the play. Is it really about the benefits of walking your kids to school? I did laugh frequently and that is something.

To quote the wit and wisdom of my own semi-smart ass: "I totally agree that a cfe is an excellent choice of investigator in today's world, but I still am not sure what she found out other than that there is a lot of fishy shit being covered up by some nasty powerful people with dead people to prove it.  Even that is something I wonder if the p-list will agree about enough to look for clues that P might be tossing out about his own research on 9-11 and the  current  dire erection of hire tech.. Because if this is a litterarty tour de farce I don't spec I got it. Maybe it's about self defense, dining and the proper use of firearms."

On the other hand maybe individual self defense is all that is left before we all defend ourselves to death.

Maybe a second reading will help. Maybe a sequel.

Sorry for all the maybes? MayBE?


On Oct 7, 2013, at 10:49 AM, Bekah wrote:

> Pynchon has used contemporary culture many times - CoL49 had Beatle stuff,   Vineland had the Star-Trek stuff,  IV had the drug culture,  BE has the techie stuff.  And every one of these books is considered "lesser" and every one is set in contemporary "hip" US.  And none of us remembers the final days of WWII in Germany,  the US colonial era,  or the world-wide events leading up to WWI.  
> 
> Bekah 
> 
> 
> On Oct 7, 2013, at 5:06 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. >>

This, or something very like it is what I was thinking as I read the first part of the book. My sense was that the investigation was going to reach far enough to provide something that would seem to have more impact on the main character and on myself, the reader.  

I honestly don't see or feel that yet.  
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list

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