BEER Group Read. Meeting cute

[Fiona Shnapple]

The major reasons for this embrace of Jewish humor involved the
changes in American society itself. Searching for a way to deal with
the emerging anxieties of the modern age, America turned to the Jews,
the masters of handling history's troubles. Jewish humor, so useful in
helping generations of anxious Jews, was called to action to serve the
similar needs of the wider American community. An immigrant generation
found in the Jews a people repeatedly practiced in starting over again
in a new place while feeling marginal and scared. A depression
generation saw in the Jews a people who had stared poverty in the face
for two thousand years and survived, families and pride intact. After
World War II, the United States confronted a seemingly invincible
Soviet threat, a threat that included the ever present possibility of
nuclear annihilation. The United States eventually grew into a society
marked by generational, racial, and gender conflicts. It became a
society divided by an unpopular war in Vietnam. Americans felt
increasingly confused by divorce, the physical and emotional
separation of families, a political structure they increasingly
believed corrupt, a changing racial mix, the radical change in the
role of women in the society, drugs, a transformed sexual ethic, and
much else.

Such a society understandably had profound anxieties. At the same
time, though, the transformations were to some extent deeply wanted.
Forbidden words and ideas could finally be expressed. Taboo but
long-sought actions could be undertaken.

http://lawrencejepstein.com/hauntedsmile/excerpt.html


On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 5:07 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> How could p write a book about ny, set during the great wave of immigration,
> and not address immigration and assimilation to some extent? The fixing of
> teeth has been mentioned and the dentists, but the nose job, there inV., the
> changed names, could Dylan make it with a name like his?, for celebrity and
> business...for success, Amy tan' waverly, shiksas, modeled by entertainers,
> the erasure of ethnicity, the melting into the pot, these are, in part,
> responses to racism, to anti-semitism in these examples. No? So immigrants
> master the very difficult art of comic language in a new culture. This is
> something to admire. No? And p is not Roth, or the other great Roth, both
> have been accused, as p gas been even here, of getting it wrong, of
> embarrassing, latent racism. So p takes a big risk commensurate with that of
> the Jewish comedian, and succeeds. No? What would Lenny Bruce do?
>
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>
>> My first take is that the ethnicity of maxine, of the middle-aged foax in
>> this novel is.....reduced to an echo of
>> itself, so to speak....assimilation as virtual elimination.....Maxine
>> jokes Jewish but..........
>>
>> Her parents are.
>>
>> Same with the Wasps....also joked about as the wasp gene or
>> inheritance..........
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23 PM
>> Subject: Re: BEER Group Read. Meeting cute
>>
>> But she is not, as the schlemiel is not, really chosen. The schlemiel is
>> one sent away from G-d, and the schlimazel, also a P protagonist, is born
>> under a bad star.  So, Jewish, chosen, but not elect but a castaway. This
>> puts them in good company in American fiction. See CLR James on Melville.
>>
>> http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org/pequod.html
>>
>> So, a web de bios double consciousness, Jewish in religion or ethnicity,
>> is doubled by the comic assimilation.
>>
>> The s, and the s, find a common scapegoat, the mother. And, the Jap, etc,
>> but the females, though, of course, the Jap, a assimilated ghetto girl is a
>> commodity, marketable, as and for old and new Jews and consumers of Jewish
>> stereotype tv, film, etc. so George is "Jewish" as are jerry and jason. The
>> parents are the old Jewish, in tv land where the actors slide into roles
>> that the audience has been taught is Jewish, and  in the Jewish community.
>> Of course, P, is playing the Simpsons card, a bag gag Joak, that
>> Woody Allen must find an Oedipus wreck.
>>
>> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>>
>> It sez that on an instinctual level, Maxi is one of the "Chosen People".
>> The Catholic/Calvinist matrix of Pynchon's points to Elect/Preterite, the
>> Jewish sense of these things is sorta different, sorta not. The Jewish
>> People know they are "Chosen", chosen for what, how am I supposed to know
>> SERENITY NOW!!!
>>
>> But being "Chosen" precludes the possibility that Maxi's Preterite [Hint
>> Reg's a preterite], so her sexual radar will have to land with a "Suitable
>> Mate". One of the things that makes "BE" so perplexing for long-time readers
>> of Pynchon is that for once—[catches breath al la Lee Strasberg as Hymie
>> Roth in Godfather II, (1974)]—for once, the protagonist's not some freakin'
>> schlemiel.
>>
>> Leaving Maxi to wonder why she she's been with such "winners" if you catch
>> my drift. In that regard, more than anything else, she reminds me of Elaine.
>>
>> On Oct 16, 2013, at 3:19 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>
>> But what Maxine does on her grief-reducing cruise is to
>> fuck "the real estate obsessive"........Symbolic I'd say (as well as real
>> enough)
>>
>> "Friendship?" Reg is puzzled..."You didn't even like hiim."
>> "A technical term".......[sez Maxine].
>>
>> Sex happens. What does THIS say about Maxine?
>> About fucking?
>> About friendship?
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l